


Summerland

by purpleseas



Series: Summerland Trilogy [3]
Category: Lost
Genre: AU, Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Sexual Content, Forgiveness, Friendship, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, Past Violence, Pining, Redemption, Romance, Sexual History, Suicidal Thoughts, Switching, Violence, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:18:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleseas/pseuds/purpleseas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the afterlife, Ben and Locke find themselves alone on the Island together, with nothing but time to deal with the past and make a new start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am not using the canon afterlife scenes or concepts at all. This conclusion to my Summerland Trilogy will have a happy ending that's 100% real. The other characters listed appear only in conversation or flashbacks.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and John have a difficult reunion in the afterlife, and Ben remembers Hurley and the smoke monster. Contains brief, non-explicit Man in Black/Jacob.
> 
> From my original LiveJournal post, the song for this chapter is "Untitled" by The Cure.

Ben moves slowly and silently through the jungle, following the monster. He’s kept his distance, and it doesn’t seem to have noticed him yet. If he’s stuck here with it, he might as well know what it does all day. He can at least try to be prepared when it comes for him, to do whatever it’s here to do. Maybe to finally judge him, without pretending to be Alex or grooming him to kill anyone this time. He wonders why the monster still looks like John, but it did die in that form. Maybe it still can’t change, or it won’t. Maybe that’s part of its justice. It’ll haunt him here forever, a merciless reminder of his worst crime and his most deeply held desire. It’ll play the devil’s part in his own little corner of hell. He can take it, he’s sure. Until it starts telling him John’s secrets again.

He watches the monster, imagining for a while that it’s really John. There’s the clean-shaven back of John’s bald head, the broad shoulders and back, thick with muscle. There’s the hand on the strap of his backpack, deeply tanned and gnarled with veins. There’s John’s way of walking, long and loose strides with a little swagger. He imagines John turning around to see him and smiling, his bad memories erased. Or having been granted a new version of his old wisdom, some sort of all-encompassing knowledge and peace that would let him forgive Ben instantaneously. He knows they’re selfish and stupid wishes, but indulges himself anyway. They could start again, if that was how things were. It could be like the dreams. He doesn’t realize he’s closed much of the distance between them, and his concentration is off. He almost trips on a vine, gasping as he starts to lose his balance. The monster freezes, then turns around. 

All Ben sees in those bright green eyes is terror. The monster isn’t here. This is John.

Ben slips from tremendous relief to a fleeting joy he doesn’t dare show. He’s kept John’s true face alive in his memory for decades, scrounging pictures from the old files and from whatever scraps of John’s life he could find on the mainland. He’s memorized every feature, every line, every fleck of stubble, but the sight of it in three dimensions makes all his joints feel like melting butter. John is nowhere near joy, pale and still. Ben takes a breath to speak. John shudders. There’s nothing Ben can possibly say to make everything all right. He has to say it anyway.

“John,” he says, his voice breaking, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

John’s trembling hand finds the knife at his belt and throws it at Ben. Ben feels the sharp point of it hit him hard between the ribs, awfully close to his heart. It doesn’t cut, doesn’t even hurt. It bounces off him and lands in the grass. Ben stares at it for a long moment, dumbfounded, and looks up again in time to see John barreling toward him. He stays still and lets himself be knocked down and beaten. He deserves this. He deserves anything John can think to do, any amount of pain John sees fit to punish him with. But John’s fists don’t hurt, either. 

Ben feels the pressure against skin and bone, the blunt force that knocks his head back and forth and sideways on the ground, but nothing more. He’s felt a fair amount of meaningless pleasure, and a great deal of pain he couldn’t be bothered to worry about. This is neither, and he can’t quite place where it might fall on any scale. It exists outside flavor or context. If it were anyone else hitting him at any other time, he might be fascinated. John is grimacing with effort. His face is a bloody red, dark with rage. Ben can smell him now, rain and clean sweat, just as he remembered. He closes his eyes and wishes he could bleed for John. Maybe this is hell. They have their Island, but there’s no peace, and no way to make amends. 

John stops eventually, making a sound somewhere between a growl and a scream. Ben feels him moving away. There are more sounds, laced with incoherent profanity. Ben waits for John to go quiet, then opens his eyes and gets up again, careful to keep his distance. John is leaning against a tree, one white-knuckled hand wrapped around a branch. He takes a few deep, sobbing breaths. There’s no other way to calm his rage, nowhere for it to go. Ben tries not to meet John's eyes when he looks up from the tree. It’s been so long since anyone has been this angry with him. He recoils, remembering a time when he didn’t mind. He was the only one who really mattered in those days, and John was doomed to cross his path. His throat is one big lump.

“You know why that didn’t work,” John says, his voice shaking. “Don’t you?”

Ben swallows, to no avail. He’s known since he woke up in his deathbed this morning, back in his forty-year-old body and completely alone in the barracks. “Because we’re dead,” he half-whispers. 

“When it happened to you, did it hurt?”

He wants to lie, wants to say he suffered like John did, betrayed and confused. He remembers last night, trying to reassure Hugo that it was okay and didn’t hurt, and Hugo crying anyway. Then a feeling like letting out a breath underwater and not needing another one. “No,” he says.

“It hurt a lot when you wrapped that cord around my neck.”

His eyes well up. “I’m sorry,” he says again, wishing it didn’t sound so ridiculous.

John’s eyes overflow, and speaking looks like a struggle. “I don’t care how sorry you are. This was my place. I was _fine_. I might as well be in hell now.” He wipes his tears away roughly. “You stay away from me,” he says, then grabs his knife and pack and walks away.

He’s long gone before Ben can start dragging himself back home. That night in the motel plays out in his mind, over and over. That dirty, desperate thing he did, that he can never take back or atone for. That trust he gained and threw away, yet again. He sees the man he was that night, so craven, so oblivious to the consequences. He sees the violence he did to himself, pushing what he felt for John so far down that he could barely see it, until he was leaving the room and it was too late. He shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t matter that all he wanted was to stay on the Island forever. John must have wanted that, too. Forcing him to share it with his murderer seems so cruel and pointless that Ben wonders momentarily if the old powers are back in charge here. 

By the time he reaches the barracks, his misery is complete. He glances at Hugo’s house, but doesn’t have the heart to go inside again. He learned to seek comfort there in life, not consistently but often enough to surprise himself. There’s nothing there for him now. He remembers walking numbly through his own house this morning. Everything was in its place, but he opened the door to a silence and stillness he hadn’t felt since he brought Hugo to live here, after everyone else was dead or gone. He and his house had been neatly sliced out of the real barracks, and the real world, and dropped into this empty replica. There was nothing to do but wander aimlessly into the jungle, not knowing what he might find. 

Ben goes back to bed. He tries to put himself back in his moment of joy at seeing John again, but can only see John’s shudder. He might as well get the box of pictures out of his bedside table, because the real John is never going to look at him without fear, or hate, or tears in his eyes. His mind drifts back to the monster, on its last night alive.

 

It was staring at him with a question in its eyes, doing a needlessly accurate impression of one of John’s little smiles. Ben wished yet again that it could still switch bodies. Or that it would have kept them walking through the night, or left him to sleep while it went off to cause mayhem elsewhere. Anything to avoid sitting around the campfire with it, being watched through stolen eyes. 

“What is it?” Ben said, trying to keep an edge of exasperation out of his voice.

“Nothing. Just trying to see what he saw. He had such a thing about your mouth.”

“Who?”

“John Locke. Who else?”

His heart beat faster and his face burned. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true. Don’t tell me you never noticed.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. He wanted you. He thought you understood him, and as much as you tried to hide from him, he saw you quite clearly. Except for the times when it would have saved him from injury or death.”

Ben bit back grief, shock, a stupid little surge of happiness that John had felt something for him. He stared hard at the fire, trying to pretend it hadn’t gone blurry for a second. “That’s not true.”

“I know what I’ve seen, Ben. I’ve seen it _all._ ”

“Well, I didn’t see anything.”

“Maybe you did, and told yourself you didn’t. You’re good at that sort of thing.”

Ben stared into the fire again, mystified. The monster scoffed. “You people,” it said, shaking its head. “You never change. Hurting each other isn’t enough, you have to hurt yourselves, too. Kill your only chance at happiness. Pathetic.”

He felt his anger building and tried desperately to rein it in before it made him say something provocative. The prospect of fleeing through the dark or becoming a stain on the nearest tree trunk didn’t excite him. “You had something to do with that. It was you in the cabin, wasn’t it?”

“Course it was. But you didn’t bother to think about that then, did you? You didn’t fight me very hard at all. Ever.”

“I didn’t know it was you.”

“Right. You thought it was Jacob tormenting you, so you sat back and took it. John Locke thought it was all part of his destiny, so he took it, too. From you, from me, from that pack of morons he crashed here with. He took it all his life. And for what? To feel _special._ To run around an island, playing make-believe.”

“You’re playing, too,” Ben said. It narrowed its eyes. Ben looked down quickly. 

“I do what I have to do to get out of here,” it said. “You keep coming back, no matter how unhappy it makes you. But I suppose that’s your natural state. It was strange to see you happy, when you thought he’d come back to life. Such joy on your face. For that first moment, anyway. Before you remembered your lust for power again, and your jealousy about Jacob, of all people. It was something to see. It still makes me wonder what I could have gotten from you, aside from your skill with a knife.” 

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t be dense. I look like him. I have his memories. I could have been him for you, just for a while.”

“But you were. You deceived me.”

“And I was barely trying. You wanted to believe it, so you did.”

His face went hotter. He wondered if he’d ever live down that shame, that failure to listen to the little voice inside that told him this wasn’t John. He was reasonably sure the disappointment of it all would never lift. “I wasn’t the only one,” he said, almost cringing. 

“But they weren’t as close to me as you were. They didn’t want it nearly as much as you did. Or at all, they didn’t give a damn about him. You’re the one who said you’d do anything he asked. If I’d come to you one of those nights, in that guise, you would have been mine forever. You would have torn them all apart with your bare hands if I told you to. Because I know what he wanted to do to you. And how he wanted to do it. That was one thing he wasn’t too bad at, but it doesn’t take a lot of intelligence.”

He almost wished the monster had seduced him. Maybe that memory would have been better than the hopeless, shameful fantasies he was left with. He would have had it to hold on to, for as long as he was permitted to live. That face, that flesh, that voice crying out for him. And so much more blood on his hands. He tried not to tremble. 

“Why didn’t you come to me?” he heard himself say. The monster gave him a slow smile, with so much of John in it that Ben had to look away. His body hovered between nausea and arousal.

“It’s more fun to make them kill themselves and each other. They always do, and then Jacob brings more. But not this time. John was his favorite of this batch, you know. You wouldn’t believe who his second favorite is.”

“Why are you telling me all this? Why do you always want to talk to me about him? You’re not like this with the others.”

“Because right now, I’m stuck with him. Just like the first one. The longer I use them, the more they linger. They pollute me. I look at you and get a head full of nonsense about wanting and longing and being an insufferable coward about it all. So I pass it on to you. It’s your mess, you deal with it.”

He tried not to sound hopeful. “Are you saying he’s still in there somewhere?”

“Why, do you want to try and draw him out?” 

“No, thank you,” he answered automatically, not trusting himself with even a second of deliberation. It didn’t look particularly disappointed or surprised. Only bored. 

“Why not?” 

“Because you’re not him. He’s dead.”

“That’s what Jacob said. He stuck to it for a long time, too. Very stubborn, very stingy. He had a rough time of it, I suppose. Started blubbering as soon as I touched him, but wouldn’t let me stop. I wonder if you’d be that way. But you’re stronger than him. You’ve proven that.”

He said nothing, trying to imagine Jacob as a man, like himself. One who’d lost something precious, only to be haunted and tempted by its cheap imitation. For the first time since the night he plunged the knife into Jacob’s chest, his residual anger began to fade. He began to understand Jacob’s silence, his isolation, his surrender. After centuries of pain, Ben might not have fought back, either. 

“Most people would jump at the chance,” the monster said. “One more night with the one they lost. Or gave away.”

“I’m not most people.”

“You certainly aren’t. That’s why I chose you.”

The hairs on the back of his neck rose. “When was that?”

“When you were a boy. When I made you see your mother.”

“And who decided she would die?”

“Why do you assume someone did? Maybe it just happened. It definitely worked to my advantage in the long run, though.”

Ben’s jaw clenched and his hands began to tremble with rage. He squeezed them together but couldn’t hold them still. He couldn’t fight and couldn’t flee. The best he could do was hide his face for a while.

“I should get to sleep,” he said.

“Suit yourself.” 

It lay its head on its backpack and stretched out. Ben did the same with his bag, turning away and curling up on his side, as far as he could get from the monster without actually crawling away. He wondered for a second if it ever slept, but didn’t trust himself to look or ask. He stared at a leaf on the ground, seething. 

“You know something?” the monster said. That voice was soft and gentle and unbearably enticing. Ben closed his eyes and tried to steel himself, wishing he could close his ears as well. 

“What?” he snapped. The monster wasn’t fazed. 

“You and John had the same dreams,” it said. “About being here together, just the two of you. Telling all your secrets. Touching. Being safe and happy, and not special anymore. The last time he ever woke up, it was from that dream. He thought you came to save him, and it might come true.”

Ben closed his eyes tighter. He tried to stay angry, to hate the monster more for that new wound, broad and deep. He could only muster a gratitude as deep as his misery. The monster went on, quieter than before, sad and distant. 

“Jacob and I used to dream that way. I can’t remember what they were now, but they were nice like that. We weren’t made to be apart. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

“How was it supposed to be?” Ben said, as if the monster could tell him how to fix what he’d done.

“We were supposed to hold on to each other. Carry the burden together. Stay so close that nothing could come between us. She said she made it so we couldn’t hurt each other, but that was just another lie. He could push me down into the light.”

He felt intrusive in the strangest way, listening to the musings of one dead man filtered through the likeness of another, but couldn’t help his curiosity. “He made you what you are?”

“That _thing_. It only looks beautiful from the outside. It rips you out of your skin and gives you another. You’re fast and strong and you can make any shape you like. But you can’t leave. He keeps you here. He makes you remember, every time you look at him. That’s what makes you hate him most. He won’t keep that sadness out of his eyes. You’d tear them out by the root if you could. If it would make you forget that night. All those nights. When he looked at you, with all the stars behind him. When he knew you, and called you by your name.” 

“What _is_ your name?” Ben whispered.

He heard the monster draw a quick breath, as if startled out of sleep. “Be quiet,” it said, its voice firm and cold again. “Go to sleep.” 

The monster was neatly dispatched the next day, but never left Ben’s thoughts. It taunted him in his weakest moments, when he was alone and overheated and desperate. _I could have been him for you. I know what he wanted to do to you_. He tried to tell himself the monster had made it all up somehow, but his memories wouldn’t cooperate. He saw John with new eyes. There was another layer to all those long looks, those smiles, that verbal warfare. He remembered the way John cried in the motel room. Great sobs of relief. John didn’t have to die anymore. He could go home again, with the man he knew inside and out, awake and asleep. 

For Ben, the dreams never stopped or changed. Over and over again, he and John told their secrets and found peace in each other’s arms. A solid month of nightmares wouldn’t hurt him as much as one walk in the jungle with John, but he wouldn’t have given up those dreams for the wide world. He’d wake up terribly happy for a second, or in tears, or sticky after his latest marathon of self-denial, then spend the rest of the day waiting to go back to sleep and see that face again. He hopes to God the dreams stopped for John. What was sublime torture for Ben would have to be screaming nightmares for the man he murdered.

He rubs the spot on his chest where John’s knife landed, pushes his finger into the hole it made, all the way through his undershirt. He gets up to look at his chest in the bathroom mirror. Not even a bruise. He stares at his face for a moment, touches the places where he should be bleeding and aching. He should look worse than he did in the armory, beaten by much heavier, angrier hands than Sayid’s. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that he was much older last night. He sees a man he remembers well but not fondly. Looking at him feels dangerous, like it might set him loose, to somehow do more damage than he’s already done. Ben leaves the room quickly. He has some experiments to perform. 

He opens a drawer in the kitchen and stares at his sharpest knife for a time, then picks it up. It can’t be sharper than John’s, but he doubts that will make much difference. He grips it tight and lays his other hand out flat, palm up. He takes a few deep breaths. As many times as he let others hurt him in life, he’s never done himself any physical harm on purpose. If he thinks about it too long, he’ll never be able to do it. There are rules everywhere, it seems, and he needs to understand what’s possible and impossible here. He closes his eyes tight and draws the knife hard across his palm. All he feels is the smooth line of the blade against his skin. It culminates in a vague tickle. He examines his hand carefully, pulling at the skin where the cut should be. Nothing but a fading indentation. 

He tries to chop at his wrist with a meat cleaver. It doesn’t cleave. He puts the knives away and digs his toolbox out from under the sink. The harder he hits himself with the hammer, the higher it bounces, until it goes flying out of his hand. The razor in the bathroom will shave the hint of five o’clock shadow off his chin, but won’t slice. When he shoves silverware into the electrical outlets, he feels a strange vibration, but no pain. He considers some outdoor experiments with heights and swimming, but John might see him. There’s still the gun.

Under Hugo’s guidance, there wasn’t much call for firearms, but it felt strange not to have one nearby. His men weren’t out there watching over him anymore, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. For a while, it was only him and Hugo, and he had a hard time believing the monster was really dead, or would remain so. A gun wouldn’t hurt it, he knew, but it would grant him the illusion of having put up a fight. He sits on his bed and takes the gun from the bedside table drawer. He thinks of John’s red face and white knuckles, and wonders yet again if John would have died more peacefully by gunshot. There might have been no final thought, no awareness of what had happened. He knows he’s edging into wishful thinking again, and forces himself to remember Richard dragging him across the beach and throwing him down in front of John’s body, his face landing right in John’s cold palm. He froze solid in warm sand, staring into that dead face. Knowing there had been no miracle and never would be. He remembers the makeshift funeral, surrounded by virtual strangers, trying not to break. Longing for comfort he didn’t deserve from people who couldn’t give it to him. 

In all the years after, his regret never left him alone, seeming to grow heavier with the passage of time. It wasn’t enough. John’s rage today, his raw pain, tells Ben that there’s still a price to pay. He’ll pay forever, if that’s what’s being asked of him now. He’ll do his penance without a struggle. Ben closes the drawer, sensing the pointlessness of another experiment. _Indestructible_ , he thinks. _Well, stranger things have happened._

He’s fine until he’s in bed for the night, staring at the ceiling. He remembers his fiftieth birthday. It was like any other during that time. A beaming Hugo appeared at his door with sloppily frosted homemade cake, far too many candles on top. Ben smiled and tried to convey his thanks adequately, never able to say how grateful he was for Hugo’s trust and warmth and simple decency. The cake was better than it looked, as usual, and he tried to enjoy it without thinking of the years he had nothing. The birthdays spent cowering from sharp words and heavy fists, then sniffling in bed, his hurt and hatred festering into a source of power. He and Hugo sat on the porch and watched the sun go down, talking about their work and their people. Hugo watched him for a while, worried.

“You’re gettin’ old, dude,” he said.

Ben smirked. “Well, thank you, Hugo.”

“I can make it stop.”

“I don’t want that.” 

“But…you’re just gonna get older. Someday you’ll be gone, and I’ll still be right here. I don’t think I can do this without you.”

He looked into Hugo’s strained, pleading face and swallowed hard. “You can do anything, Hugo. You’ve already done more good in a few years than he did in millennia. But I can’t accept what you’re offering. It’s a kind of power, knowing your time is unlimited. When I was the leader here, I was given a great deal of power. I relished it. I would have done anything to keep it. It didn’t matter what it cost me, or anyone else. I gave up my daughter, and I killed a man I should have followed to the ends of the earth. I couldn’t see the monster right in front of me. I’m not saying I don’t want to stay here and help you. I’m saying I don’t trust myself to live without limits. I need to know I don’t have time to make those mistakes again, when there's already so much to answer for. I need to let you lead me. That may be what I've always needed. Give me anything else, and I become a danger to myself and to this place.”

“But anybody could do that, if stuff went wrong. I could.”

Ben gave him a small, sad smile. “No, you couldn’t.”

Hugo stared at the porch floor. Vincent was sleeping at his side, head on his paws. Ben grinned. “If anyone can be trusted with immortality, it’s him. He’s probably better company than I am most of the time, anyway.”

Hugo laughed. “You just need to lighten up a little, man.”

“I try.” 

“I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

Ben’s breath caught. He never quite got used to Hugo’s affection for him, and lived with a constant low-grade fear of losing it somehow. “That may not be for a very long time. I could live another thirty or forty years. Maybe another fifty. It's not unheard of.”

Hugo smiled. “Yeah, but I’ll still miss you.”

“Likewise,” Ben said softly. 

Over the years, Hugo asked him a few times if he’d changed his mind, but the answer was always no. Each time seemed easier for Ben. He never settled the question of where he might end up after death, if anywhere, but hoped it would be here. He almost looked forward to finding out. Now he knows. Maybe he can get a message to Hugo without being able to see him. He can walk around whispering until someone hears. He’ll tell them to turn the wheel until they come to a time when he was still alive. It doesn’t matter that it wouldn’t work and that dead is dead. This can’t be all there is. He’ll lose his mind. 

His heart is pounding, and he’s seized by flashing memories of running through the jungle. There’s no context, only dread. He has to get away, but there’s nowhere to go this time. No one to save him, not even if he resorts to his old tricks. Only vines to trip him and stinging rain to chill him all the way through. His teeth chatter, and he hugs his knees. This can’t be happening. He can’t stay here, alone and hated and punished for all time. He can’t be dead.

He knows what’s happening to him. He remembers Hugo’s terror after they saw the Ajira plane fly overhead, carrying the last of his friends away from the Island for good. It was all real for him then, and his grip left a colorful array of bruises on Ben’s forearm. _I can’t do this_ , he kept saying, until he was hyperventilating too badly to say anything. Ben kept up an opposite mantra until Hugo was calm again. He didn’t let go of Ben’s arm or look away from his eyes. He latched onto the only familiar thing left to him, and made a place in his enormous heart for a man who’d made him and his friends suffer immeasurably. A man he’d once tried to ward off with some sort of microwaved food product. Ben can almost laugh, slipping from panic to a kind of exhausted delirium. It doesn’t last. He knows John’s heart is closed to him, and he knows who closed it. He breaks down completely.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While adjusting to his new existence, Ben remembers his first day with Hurley, and a rare opportunity to see himself and John through the eyes of another human being. John arrives in the barracks with questions about his murder and its aftermath.
> 
> From my original LiveJournal posts, the songs for this chapter are "This Must Be The Place [Naive Melody]" by Talking Heads and "Bium Bium Bambalo" by Sigur Rós.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not using the canon afterlife scenes or concepts at all. This conclusion to my Summerland Trilogy will have a happy ending that's 100% real. The other characters listed appear only in conversation or flashbacks.

Being alone is nothing new for Ben, but it’s been a long time since he’s had no choice in the matter. Hugo was always close by, and never left the Island without him. Ben still went to the mainland on his own from time to time, but felt more isolated there than ever before, and always hurried home. Always trying to outrun the nagging feeling that something had gone wrong in his absence. He dreamed of coming back to find the barracks in various states of desolation. The grounds littered with corpses, like they were the day he and his people came to claim the spoils of the Purge. The houses dark and half-consumed by the elements, as they had been when he first returned there with the monster. The whole place as quiet and empty as if nothing living had ever set foot there, like it was when he and Hugo came to stay.

It was close to evening when they arrived. Ben escorted a relatively steady Hugo to the house next door and promised to come back soon. He entered his own house carefully, remembering the light and movement in Alex’s room just the other night, the way it made his heart lift and sink at once. There was only the glare of the setting sun through the front windows then, highlighting all the dust and disarray. He tried not to do more than glance at the displaced bookcases, unable to stop a few flashes of memory. Moving them with John, admitting his fear of the mercenaries, never imagining how badly he’d be hurt. He’d have to get Hugo to help him move everything back as soon as possible. It would be wonderful to have the house as neat and clean as he used to keep it, but he didn’t know where to start. Perhaps with his bedding, since he’d be needing it before long. With everything in the washer, there was time for a short nap. 

John was the last to sleep in that bedroom, in the hospital bed left over from Ben’s recovery. Ben pretended to himself that there was something of John left behind, a vague hint of his smell on the pillow, a memory of his shape still pressed into the mattress. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, maybe he could bring on that dream, for the first time since the monster told him it wasn’t his alone. He tried, but his mind kept wandering off to marvel at the idea of being home, permanently, with no obvious danger outside and no need to get up and run across the Island again in an hour or two. Exhaustion overtook him, and he didn’t dream at all. He woke to Hugo in his doorway. 

“Oh,” Ben said. “I was just taking a nap.”

Hugo laughed. “That was a pretty long nap, dude. It’s tomorrow already.”

Ben squinted at the morning light. “You could have woken me. Are you all right?”

“I’m good. I figured you must be pretty tired. I was, too. Are you hungry?”

His stomach answered for him. He and Hugo had a breakfast of peanut butter on very stale crackers, and canned fruit in horrid, cloying syrup. There wasn’t much else in the cupboards, and nothing had been left in the refrigerators for the past three years, mercifully. He supposed his people had taken what they could use and disposed of the rest, maybe while Richard was here burying Alex. He realized he didn’t know where Richard was and didn’t expect to see him again. He was gone, without so much as a goodbye or a chance to give a little advice. Maybe Ben could give him that chance, if he could decide whether it would be cruel or kind to do so. Hugo kept glancing at him, then back down at his plate, opening his mouth to speak once, only to close it. Ben had some idea of what was coming, and waited silently for it. 

“Can I ask you something?” Hugo said.

“Of course.”

“Why Charlie?” 

“I was protecting the Island,” he answered automatically. “It was nothing personal.”

“Oh,” Hugo said, his eyes downcast, and Ben knew he’d given the wrong answer. He felt a twinge of fear, small but very strong. There wasn’t much to tie the two of them together. Hugo didn’t exactly choose him out of a crowd of suitable advisors. He had to be what the new man in charge wanted and needed. He could see no other option, no way to live out the rest of his life, beyond going back out into the world. Alone and purposeless, having gained more by chance than he’d ever gotten for himself through guile, only to lose it all again. There wouldn’t be another John, another cheap and miserable death to buy his way back here. Or maybe there would. There had to be a limit to what one could survive. Even for him. 

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Ben said, though it would take time to truly feel that way, especially about the troubles and deaths of those he’d never known, who existed for him only as names in files. As pieces to be moved around a board, even as he was being moved himself.

Hugo brightened a bit. “I guess that’s what I really wanted to know.” 

Ben nodded. Hugo ate another cracker and watched him for a moment. “Did you guys…never mind.”

“Did we what?”

“Did you ever think about, like…coming down to the beach and talking to us? Helping us, maybe? Instead of trying to…kidnap us and kill us and stuff?”

He remembered the day of the crash, coming out of his house to see the plane break apart in midair, shading his eyes with a trembling hand. He gave the orders quickly, excited and a bit frightened inside, but ready for anything. Anyone could have been on that plane. There could be female survivors who might make it through childbirth. He collected Juliet and headed for the Flame, eager to know who’d boarded the plane and how they could be used. Then it would only be a matter of waiting for Ethan and Goodwin to report back about the survivors. Ben would formulate a plan and execute it, and it would work. If they didn’t cooperate, they wouldn’t last long. He never considered doing things differently. He tried to imagine walking down to that beach, bringing his people to meet with Hugo’s, offering help, asking only one thing of Jack before they put him on the submarine home. _Asking_ , without pretense or hidden agendas, one man to another. The pictures were dim in his mind. 

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

“So you thought that’d all work? We wouldn’t fight back or beat you guys?”

“Yes.”

“Did it work before? We weren’t the first ones, right?”

“Right. It worked on a small scale, but we’d never dealt with so many arrivals at once.”

“Was that how Jacob wanted it?”

“Jacob was never very specific, beyond his lists. He’d set us a task, and we’d figure out how to accomplish it. If he had any qualms, I never heard about them. The leaders all made…certain embellishments, but our basic methods never changed. We were told to protect the Island at any cost. Nothing else mattered. Not that we were told much else, but if you keep people frightened, they won’t ask you too many questions. They won’t know you have only the foggiest notion of what’s going on yourself. Force comes naturally in that case. It’s something everyone understands.”

“And it makes a lot of bad things happen when they don’t have to. If we’d talked to each other, things would’ve been totally different. We wouldn’t have almost sunk the Island and blew up the whole world, or whatever. The bad stuff isn’t just bad, dude, it doesn’t work. I don’t want you to do any of that for me.”

His heart began to pound. He knew well enough that Hugo would change things, quickly and dramatically, but it was more terrifying than he’d imagined. Brutality was the only constant in Ben’s life. He’d suffered under it, then learned to wield it himself, taught by people for whom it was both a tool and an art form. It bought him some freedom, and a paltry sense of security that would only last until his enemies had had enough of him, or he was passed over for someone else. It couldn’t make him less lonely or more loved. Its comfort was cold and fleeting, but it was there, and better than nothing. He’d been a party to that world’s collapse, helped obliterate everything he’d ever known. This new world was completely alien and barely formed, but he was as desperate to belong in it as he’d been before, when he was a child begging Richard to take him home. He desperately needed his first order, something to do and to be. 

“What do you want me to do?” he said, trying to project calm. “It’s all up to you now.”

Hugo thought for a while. “What if, whenever something happens, I ask you what you guys would have done, and then we do the opposite thing?”

He could well imagine that keeping him busy for quite a while, and felt a kind of exhilaration. In spite of everything, his experience wasn’t completely worthless. He could use it without repeating the worst of it. He could move forward. “I’d be happy to help you with that.”

“Do you think Desmond will be able to find that butcher lady? Give her your note? ‘Cause we don’t even have his sailboat anymore and it’s kinda scary being stuck here again. I still wanna see my family sometime. And I have to go find new people, don’t I?”

He remembered Desmond’s expressionless eyes on him as he took the paper from Hugo and listened to Ben apologize for what he’d done at the marina. He’d asked Sun to do that if he didn’t come out of the cavern alive, and that was just the start of his trouble. There was still Ilana’s desire for vengeance, the monster, the fallen tree, the Island breaking apart and his vow to go down with it. He was ready. If anyone was supposed to end up dead, it was Ben. He thought he could see Desmond thinking something like that. He felt he should explain why he’d come through it all alive and relatively unscathed when someone like Sun hadn’t, but he couldn’t explain that to himself. Maybe the Island had chosen him to serve Hugo before Hugo had. Maybe there was no design to it at all, only happenstance. Desmond listened, took Jill’s shop address, the coded instructions for her, the bearing he was to follow. He said goodbye to Hugo, and nothing to Ben. All the same, Ben was relieved to have said the words. He couldn’t expect forgiveness, but he’d done what he could. Their child had looked too young to remember any of it later. He hoped. 

“He’ll do it,” Ben said. “For you, certainly not for me. We’ll have another submarine soon.” 

Hugo stared dubiously at a slimy bit of peach speared on his fork. "Can you hunt?”

“In a pinch, but I don’t think it’ll come to that. We’ll go find the food drops. Today, if you like. We’ll be fine.” Ben got up for a glass of water, unsure for a moment how to broach the next subject. Might as well be direct, no matter how awkward it might sound. “So…you see ghosts.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen a bunch since I got back here.”

“You haven’t seen Alex, have you?”

Hugo shook his head, with a flash of sympathy in his eyes that Ben had to look away from. “I saw Michael, and Jacob, and Richard’s wife. It can happen anytime, though.”

“What do they say to you?”

“They ask me to do stuff, mostly. To help me with something that’s gonna happen, or help them get unstuck. Sometimes they just wanna hang out for a while. Like Mr. Eko, we played chess.”

“They don’t talk about how they were killed? Or by whom?”

“Not really, unless I ask. They’re not out for revenge, or whatever. They’re not mad about it.” His eyes widened a bit. “Oh man, that’d suck.”

Ben smiled faintly. “I’m sure it would.”

Hugo watched him for a moment. Ben took another sip and looked away again, not knowing why he was so uncomfortable.

“Is there somebody else you wanna ask about, besides Alex?” Hugo said. 

Ben felt a familiar clenching inside, an automatic warning that he should pull his mask back on before it could slip too far. It wasn’t nearly as strong as it used to be, after so much recent exposure, but it was insistent enough. The ability to hide and hold back what he felt had served him well as leader here, where softness and weakness could get him banished or killed. It had served him very badly as a man, but it still granted a perverse sort of comfort. Like a security blanket he’d long since outgrown. Ilana had seen the mask fall away completely, and found the man behind it worth sparing. Hugo never sought to hurt him at all, and even trusted him now. He wanted to be able to return that trust. He proceeded carefully.

“What makes you say that?”

“I heard about the, uh…funeral. Locke’s.”

“Who told you?”

“Frank. It just kinda came up.”

He said the words as the realization hit him. “You still chose me after that.”

“Yeah.”

In place of asking how Hugo could overlook something like that, he only shook his head.

“Because you’re sorry,” Hugo said. “Because you _can_ be sorry, and that means there’s good stuff in you. A lot of us did really bad things. Or things we just felt really bad about. We all got another chance. And that’s the whole point, dude. You need it as much as anybody. Maybe more, ‘cause you used to be, you know, the bad guy. I think that’s gonna be my whole thing. I’m gonna go out there and find the ones everybody else gave up on, and bring them here. Well, maybe not all the other bad guys, but you know what I mean. What do you think?”

He turned around and rinsed his glass with exaggerated care, speaking carefully around the lump in his throat. “I think it sounds wonderful.” He dried the glass only to fill it again, at a loss for what to do or say.

“Maybe Locke _is_ here,” Hugo said, “but I just can’t see him. Because he’s not like Michael, or the other ones. Maybe he’s okay. Just hangin’ out and doing Locke stuff, you know?”

“You think he’s happy.”

“That’d be cool, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“His life really sucked. It’d be nice if he just forgot all the bad stuff.”

And in that case, he’d be someone John barely remembered, Ben thought. Maybe John would still have their dream from time to time, and wonder about it, but it wouldn’t trouble him. Ben would be a vaguely pleasant figure, like a character from a book John might have read and enjoyed ages ago. He wanted to believe in Hugo’s speculation. He didn’t have many concrete reasons not to, but he could never think much about it without a sense of guilty indulgence. Something in him knew it was a fantasy. John didn’t forget a thing.

“Remember when we were trying to find the cabin?” Hugo said. “You and me and him?”

“Yes. You said we could see it because we were the craziest ones.”

Hugo laughed. “That was so weird. You guys were…weird.”

Tell me everything, he wanted to say. Let me see us through human eyes, kind ones, without malice and judgment. Tell me you didn’t see more than I did. Tell me I wasn’t the only one who missed it entirely. “How so?” he said.

“I dunno, there was just this _thing_ with you two. It was like…tense. Like when I was a kid and my mom and dad would fight, then stop when I came in the room. But you guys fought a lot quieter. And he was really worried about you when that mercenary guy knocked you out and dragged you away. You were the one who knew how to move the Island and all that, so we needed you, but…it’s hard to explain. I really thought the rest of us would leave and it’d just be you two and the other…Others. It’d be really scary, ‘cause you guys would do anything. I know I never would’ve come back! But it wouldn’t be a big surprise. Not like now…It’s okay that it’s me, I’ll stay, I won’t mess with people and try to make them do it. But if he was still around, it never would have been me, or Jack.”

The possibility of sharing power with John had never entered Ben’s mind. Not long ago, serving him would have been impossible to imagine. It was painfully easy at that moment. He saw himself at John’s side through good and bad. He was John’s liar, his soldier, his last line of separation and protection from the world. No other power on the Island stood a chance against them. He was strong when John needed him to be, and tender when John wanted him. He had John’s love, sweet and ferocious and endless. All he’d had to do was let go of that extension cord and tell the truth. He could see them coming home on the Ajira plane together. The first wave of turbulence was unbearably exciting. By the time the plane began its descent, they were laughing out loud. 

He had to stop thinking about it. It would come back with a vengeance when he was alone again, but he could outrun it for the next few hours. “Would you like to go on that walk now?” he said. “To find the food?”

“Okay.”

“Maybe you could tell me about Charlie on the way.”

Hugo smiled, looking as if he’d been waiting a long time for such an opportunity, and they set off.

Over time, Ben would ask about each of the survivors in turn, and come to know them through Hugo. He wouldn’t love them like Hugo did, or easily forgive the things they’d done to him out of well-earned hate but terrible ignorance, having just remembered how he earned his trip to the temple as a boy. He would come to understand the damage he’d done in Jacob’s name, but that was easy enough. The real work was in accepting what he’d done in his own name, and what he could have done differently. He told Hugo something of John’s murder, nowhere near the whole story, but more than anyone else ever heard. It felt good to confess a little, to be seen as he was and known as well as anyone other than John could know him. Hugo’s lack of condemnation never ceased to amaze him. Sometimes it felt like forgiveness by proxy, and he refused to let himself dwell on the fact that he was unlikely to ever get it otherwise. It was enough to feel that forgiveness was at all possible. 

 

After his breakdown, he sleeps well into the afternoon. He rolls out of bed and staggers aimlessly through the house, splashes his face with cold water at the bathroom sink, looks out the front windows at the lifeless barracks. There’s something he should be doing, something mundane and obvious, but he can’t think what it is until he wanders into the kitchen. He isn’t hungry. His last meal was liquid and at least two days ago. He couldn’t manage anything else by then, but with this young and healthy body, he should be famished. The refrigerator is stocked with fresh and varied food. The first thing that catches his eye is a hunk of cheese in one of the drawers. He picks it up. It’s soft and pungent, and he can’t remember the last time he had anything like it. He’d love to be hungry, and so he is. His mouth waters, and he takes a huge bite. It’s creamy and nutty and absolutely sublime. When it’s gone, he stares down at the kitchen rug and concentrates on its pattern to the exclusion of all else. The hunger disappears. He can turn it on and off at will. It’s convenient, he supposes, but awfully surreal. He leaves the room to bathe and dress. When he comes back, he finds that so has the cheese, right where he found it in the drawer. He shakes his head and goes out for a walk around the barracks. 

The place was livelier than ever with Hugo in charge, more like the Dharma days than Ben’s tenure. All the new people truly wanted to be there and didn’t have to sell their souls for the privilege. They brought children, enough to begin to fill the old playground and schoolroom again, and they had babies. Pregnancies were few, but the babies were born healthy, to mothers who didn’t die. He couldn’t ask for anything more. He was always the first to visit those families after the births, bringing gifts and doing his best to seem more interested in the parents than he actually was. What he wanted was their inevitable offer to let him hold the baby. Every one of them was Alex. That same round weight on his chest, the same impossibly soft skin and strong little fists, that same sweet smell from the top of the head. She’d come back to him. He had another chance, and he’d do better this time. He’d never give her cause to say she hated him, and she’d never have to doubt his love for her. He always gave the babies back with no more than a second’s hesitation. Always grateful that these people didn’t know the whole story of the big guy’s assistant. They saw his daughter’s grave, now marked and covered with the flowers he’d transplanted from the Orchid, and didn’t suspect that he was to blame. He was just an odd but decent man who loved children. He’d leave their houses in pain, but happy, too. Life went on. There’d be someone to take care of things after he was gone. 

Sometimes he’d tire of all the hustle and bustle and long for night, when he could read, write in his journal, be alone with his thoughts in relative peace. Now he goes from house to house, turning on televisions and stereos. It makes for an effective illusion of not being alone, but he can never quite forget that that’s what it is. He catches himself in soliloquies, and wonders how long he’s been here. Time is strange now, harder to keep track of. Sometimes it seems like years have gone by since that first morning, but mostly, it feels like yesterday. This must be how eternity passes, he thinks. No human mind could withstand it otherwise. 

He wonders how it is for John, and wishes there was a way to know if he was all right without inflicting his presence on the man. When John walks into the barracks one afternoon as Ben is sweeping his porch, Ben knows better than to ask. He doesn’t say anything at all, frozen and breathless, waiting for John to speak. 

“If I ask you to tell me the truth,” John says, “will you do it?”

“Yes.”

There’s still anger in John’s eyes, but it’s not what it was that day. It doesn’t radiate from him, touching Ben without hands. “I don’t know why I should believe you, but I don’t have anybody else to ask.”

“I have no reason to lie to you here. Even if I did, I wouldn’t.”

John gives him half a smirk. “Oh. Are you _done lying_?”

“I know I said that to you, in the Swan. It was a lie in itself. But I’ve been done for a while. I lived a long time. Things changed around me, and I changed with them…I should have told you the truth anyway. You were the only one I _could_ have told.” His voice goes thick. “You would have understood.”

There’s a little flinch around John’s eyes, a little softness he can’t hide before he looks away. “Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you,” he says, his voice hard.

“I’m not, I…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. I don’t want to hear you say that anymore. It doesn’t mean anything. I only want to know what happened.”

“All right.”

“I want to know everything. Why you killed me. What happened here after I was gone, what happened to everybody else. Can you give me that?”

“Yes. Whatever you want.”

There’s a long silence. John rolls his eyes. “Why are you stalling?”

“Don’t you…want to sit down?”

“I’m not coming over there.”

“I need some water.”

John raises an eyebrow, knowing that’s not quite true. Water is still reassuring somehow, in a way food isn’t, maybe because the Island is still as hot as ever. But they don't _need_ it. Except as a prop to keep their hands busy. 

“Then get it,” John says.

Ben lingers at the sink for a few minutes, holding the edge of it, breathing deeply. In the dreams, it’s so easy to tell John anything, but he never actually hears the words he’s saying. He has no idea how to explain himself in reality. _Just tell the truth_ , Hugo would say. _Calm down, dude_. Ben gets his water, takes a gulp and heads back outside. 

John is waiting, arms folded. Ben sits and waits for his first question, viscerally reminded of the day he sat here waiting for the monster to kill him. He concentrated on holding still then. He was surprised he could sit so stiffly upright without bones.

“Why?” John says. 

He remembers John asking him this very question in the Swan, in a wildly different context, such a long time ago. _Now that’s a broad question_ , he replied then. If he said something like that now, John would probably leave on the spot. Then Ben wouldn’t have to explain. It’s briefly tempting, but he has some hope, however small, that this conversation will make things better for John. That understanding it will make it hurt a little less. It'll never work, but he’ll do it anyway. He’ll do anything.

“I thought I could get my power back,” he says quietly. “I thought if you were gone, they’d give it back to me.”

John’s jaw works. “Why would you think that? Last time I saw you, you were leaving it all behind. You were resigned to losing it. Telling me destiny was a fickle bitch, telling me I couldn’t go with you, and it was my time to lead. What the hell happened to that? Did you just make it all up?”

“No. I did feel that way. I wasn’t capable of much else, after Alex. But I doubted you’d last in my position, because of the ways we differed. You couldn’t be cold, and you always wanted to know the why of things. Blind obedience didn’t suit you. You were dangerous, but you were chosen. I hoped you’d be all right, and no one would decide you needed to be removed. Because I’d probably be the one to do it. I was sometimes called on for that sort of work on the mainland.”

“How would you do it if you couldn’t come back?”

“That part wasn’t strictly true. Even Jacob left, from time to time. I came and went as I pleased, but by the submarine. It was all in the way you left, not the fact of leaving. Being banished or using the wheel made it very difficult to return. And if we did manage to find our way back, it might not want us, and it would be easier to fall prey to the monster.” He feels a tremor in his hand and holds the glass tighter. He knows he’ll get to the monster’s last guise sooner or later, and it makes him want to pop cleanly out of existence. 

“What changed, then? Why couldn’t you just deal with it and leave me alone?”

“I was on the mainland for three years, trying to avenge my daughter. I wanted to take from Charles Widmore everything he’d taken from me. I dismantled his entire apparatus of thugs and mercenaries, and I threatened his daughter’s life. But none of it made up for Alex. I could do whatever I wanted out there. My resources were as limitless as my aliases. So none of it was of any particular consequence. Nothing was truly my own. All I’d ever had was here, and I convinced myself I could have it again. If I could bring them all back, instead of you or Charles, it would let me stay. Jacob couldn’t ignore me anymore. I’d be special. Not you.”

John lets out a bitter laugh and shakes his head. “You’re such a child.”

“Yes. I was.”

“It was that easy to be special, huh? It had nothing to do with me? Because your people sure made a big deal out of it. Like they’d been waiting for me for years.”

“We had a lot of vague notions about a leader better than the rest, more connected to the Island and favored by it. A fantasy that grew up through the years, part of what passed for religion among us. Some of it came about because of your travels through time, some through…other circumstances. We’d seen a great deal of the Island’s healing power, but never on a condition like paralysis. We thought you might be what we were waiting for.” 

“So, did getting rid of me work? Did they welcome you back with open arms?”

“No. They were still waiting for you.”

“Great. That’s great. Did you have a good time doing it, at least?”

“No.”

“Well, goddamn it, Ben,” he says, his voice rising. “I’m real sorry you lost all your _stuff_ , but you might have noticed that noose around my neck when you busted into my room. I was gonna end it all, the way I chose. It was my life to take.” His eyes shine, and he pauses to breathe in broken gasps. “You had no right.”

“I’m s—I know I didn’t. I shouldn’t have done it.”

John catches his breath slowly, and his voice goes low again. “So you planned it all along. It wasn’t as sudden as it felt.”

“No, it wasn’t. I brought gloves and cleaning supplies. I made it look like you’d followed through with your plan. There was a moment or two when I thought I might not have to do it. Not right then, anyway, because you didn’t seem to have all the information I was looking for. But when you said the name, I knew. I…I did it.”

“How did it feel? If it didn’t feel good.”

“It was…very difficult. Strangling someone isn’t easy, even with a garrote.”

“You’re telling me. I felt it all, you know. I felt my throat coming together. Why’d you have to do it like that? Why not just shoot me in the head?”

Ben closes his eyes for a second. “It still had to look like a suicide. That was the only way to get them all back here. Through Jack’s guilt. But you knew that already.”

“Yeah, so why couldn’t you make it look like a suicide with a gunshot? Why squeeze the life out of somebody who knows what’s happening to him?”

“It was a cheap motel with thin walls. Too much noise. I didn’t even bring a gun. And I was watching you, I’d seen you buy the cord. So I used what was available.”

“Well, aren’t you practical. You could have taken me out of there, I would have been happy to go. Could have shot me down right out in the open, given me the same courtesy you gave Abaddon.”

“I might wish I had done it like that, if I would wish for anything other than never having harmed you at all, in any way.” 

John turns his face up toward the sky and sighs, lets his eyes close and his neck arch. Ben sees the press of tendons and veins against the skin, sees himself touching John there with his hands and his mouth. It’s madness to think of something like that now. It’s never going to happen, he knows that. This is only the consequence of seeing John again after wanting him so long. He tries to tell himself he can turn it off, like hunger, but he’s not quite as good at self-deception as he once was. The lies have to be much smaller now. He can only avert his eyes and punish himself with the memory of what he did to that neck, the hideous noises he heard as he crushed it with the cord and as he staged the body. John’s voice is softer when he speaks again, almost unbearably so. 

“Why’d you have to be so nice to me? When you talked me down, when you put me in my chair. You made me think I was gonna be okay. What was the point of that?”

Ben takes another sip and swallows it hard. “I didn’t want to antagonize you. I would have had to subdue you, and it would have left suspicious marks.”

“You _held my hand_ because you didn’t want to fight with me?”

The glass is only emphasizing his trembling hands now, no matter how hard he grips it. He puts it down. “I didn’t want you to suffer. I didn’t know you’d stay conscious so long. I thought you’d be gone before you knew what was happening, or even who was doing it.”

“What about when I really was gone? How was that for you?”

“I was relieved. I’d done what I had to do, and it was over. I arranged your body and cleaned up, and then…”

“Yeah?” 

Every instinct tells him to shut his mouth and flee. John doesn’t want to hear this. He must have gotten past it himself by now, probably ages ago. It couldn’t have come through the murder intact. But he said he wanted to know everything. There’s no getting away from it, now that Ben’s brought it up. “I looked at you, and I said I’d miss you.”

“Why would you say that?”

His body is an empty space that his heart sinks through. He’s not ready for this. He never will be. His chin starts wobbling. There’s that flinch around John’s eyes again. This time, he turns his back.

“Because I…” Ben begins. 

“You what?”

“Because I thought about you quite often.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I…the thoughts were along the lines of…”

“I’m listening.”

His arms wind around his ribs, but he can’t make himself as small as he feels. “Because there were things I felt for you…I wanted you. All of you.”

Ben can see the rise and fall of John’s breathing from the back, how it speeds up as he says these things. “Wanted,” John says, barely above a whisper.

“Yes.”

“But not anymore.”

“I’ve never stopped. It’s never gone away.”

Ben hears a short, shaky breath. “Since when?”

“The Swan. The lockdown.”

John’s hand comes up to his face and stays there, wiping at his eyes a few times. His silence stretches out longer and longer. Against his better judgment, Ben says John’s name.

“Please,” John says, breathless, his voice strained. “Just give me a minute.”

There’s no rebuke in it, no disgust, no dismissal. Nothing that should be there if this revelation doesn’t matter to him. If he doesn’t feel that way himself anymore. Ben could have killed this part of him, this battered heart and soul that somehow never closed or went cold. His betrayal would have made that understandable, but it hasn’t happened, and if that didn’t do it, nothing will. John is still John. Ben tries to suppress his awe, without much success. It’s all he can do to resist the impulse to get up and comfort him the way he should have that night. That moment isn’t coming again. 

It takes John a while to get his bearings. He doesn’t turn all the way back around, but Ben can see the redness of his eyes in profile as he stares at the ground. “What did you do then?” he says.

“I went back to my hotel and drank all the alcohol in the mini-bar.”

He can hear how stunned he sounds, so of course, John can, too. John glances up, and their eyes lock. There’s no hiding now. He sees the terror of exposure in John’s wet eyes, the grief he put there, the longing he couldn’t kill. He knows he’s mirroring it all for John, and lets him see everything. His heart palpitates. He wishes desperately that they could have had this moment in life, that he didn’t have to find out from the monster first, that they didn’t have to die to talk to each other. John looks down first, his breath quickening again. 

“Because you felt…” he says.

“I didn’t want to feel anything at all. I got very close to it, but there was something I couldn’t blot out. Something was coming for me, and I couldn’t stop it or get away from it. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. I felt sure that when it finally showed itself, it wouldn’t be pretty. When I got sick, it was from dread as much as drunkenness. I felt better then, I could sleep. In the morning, I was fine. I began to lie about your death. No one saw the truth. Because I’d killed the only one who could see through me.”

John swallows hard. “You didn’t think about me?”

“I thought of you as something I wanted but could never have had. Just one more in a long line of _things_. I didn’t understand how deep it went, or what it could have been, but I would come to find out very soon. In small ways, at first.”

“Tell me.”

“I paid for your coffin, and your suit. When Jack broke into the funeral home, I was there waiting for him. Looking at you. Letting myself wonder very briefly if it would all be worth it in the end. And then we set out to bring them back. They hated me, naturally. Jack and Sun spoke openly of killing me. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like that, I could have ignored it. But I thought of you, and shouted at them. If they had any idea what I’d done to keep them safe, they’d never stop thanking me, I said. I’d kept them safe from the possible consequences of leadership other than mine, better than mine. I’d maintained order on the Island, I told myself, when all I’d done was enforce my own will. But I could still think of it as a sacrifice, because I’d denied myself something I wanted, and kept myself safe from feeling more for you than I could control. Or so I thought.”

“How…” John begins, but his breath catches and he looks away. Ben grips the arm of his chair hard. He knows there’s no comfort he can offer for this, no matter how much the impulse threatens to propel him off the porch. He can’t even apologize. All he can do is wait.

“How did you get them back?” John says.

“A lot of it was Jack’s doing. I brought them the information you’d given me and the manufactured sense of danger, from men I hired to pursue them. He brought old loyalties, which were just as powerful. They gravitated toward him, as they’d done before.”

“What did he think about what happened to me?”

“He was devastated. He tried to jump off a bridge.”

“Tried to?”

“He distracted a woman driving by and caused an accident, then rushed over to offer assistance. She and her son survived.”

“So, he accidentally gave himself a reason to live?”

“I suppose he did.”

He lets out something like a chuckle. “That’s him, all right. Couldn’t get out of his own way, unless you gave him something to fix.”

Ben suppresses a smile. “True.”

“But I didn’t need his damn fixing. That’s why he hated me. So he wouldn’t have tried that just because of me. I can buy him feeling guilty, I was counting on that, but not trying to kill himself.”

“No, there were other factors. He didn’t do well out there. He lost Kate, started seeing his father’s ghost again, took staggering amounts of painkillers. He began to realize that he should have listened to you, and even to me, and took a lot of unnecessary flights over the Pacific, hoping to crash here again. All before your death. He blamed himself for it, before he read the note and likely after. I told him it wasn’t his fault, but I don’t think he believed me.”

John’s jaw clenches. “Then it was more about him than about me, like always. He was the last one of them to say no. Said I was just a lonely old man, nothing special.”

“He was wrong, he came to understand that. He became a man of faith, eventually. A little like you.”

“Sounds like he died in the process.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Lot of good that faith did him, then. Just like me. Now get to the part where you came back to the Island. What did you do, crash another plane?”

“Yes.”

“What then?”

“We landed on Hydra island. I was about to take a boat back here with Sun when I was…incapacitated. She preferred to search for Jin with the pilot, understandably. I was taken to the makeshift infirmary, where I lay unconscious for quite a while.”

He can’t believe he’s come to it already. It’s much too soon. For the first time in decades, he misses lying. Not the white lies he and Hugo told the few people who arrived on the Island by mistake and didn’t belong, before sending them on their way. Or the things he covered and kept from everyone, like his feelings for John. He misses the ridiculous whoppers he told his captives and his original people. He was born on the Island, he spoke to Jacob, he’d let them all go for favors large and small. It was so easy then, fun for a while, then increasingly tedious. By the time Sun asked him about the statue and about whether he expected to be believed, he was bored half to death. He’s out of practice, but he could omit the monster and make up an uncomplicated and even happy ending if he tried. For almost everyone but John. He knows he’s been quiet for a while and expects another impatient prodding. John doesn’t give him one right away.

“It’s bad,” he says quietly. “The next thing is really bad.”

“Yes.”

“Just say it. It can’t be as bad as what you did.”

“It happened _because_ of what I did.” 

“Sun knocked you out and you woke up to what?” 

He remembers those first moments, when he woke to John’s face, to his smile. John was alive and well, and not angry. All was forgiven, it seemed, so quickly and easily. He should have known right then. 

“You came back,” he says, his voice threatening to break. 

“What?”

“You came back, but it wasn’t really you.”

John stares at him, dawning horror in his eyes. Ben wants nothing more than to stop talking, perhaps forever, but doesn’t wait to be prompted again.

“You remember the monster,” he says. “But you didn’t know it could take human form, none of us did. It took yours.”

“How?”

“Through your death. It couldn’t be anyone living, it needed a body to copy. We brought yours back with us, because we were told to recreate the conditions of the original flight.”

“I was alive on the original flight. Minor detail there.”

“I know. I can only tell you what happened, I can’t claim to understand it all.” 

“You killed me so it could…”

“I didn’t know. I thought it was a miracle. But not necessarily a good one. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Dead is dead. I knew that, but as terrified as I was, I didn’t want to believe it. Some part of me wanted you to come back as soon as you were gone. And it knew that. It knew exactly how to use me. And you. Your image, your knowledge, your place with our people. And yours.” 

John rubs his head. “How many of them did it kill?”

“Four.”

He grimaces. “And they thought it was me.”

“No. It had revealed itself by then, after it gave up trying to seduce them into helping it leave the Island. Some were taken in, and some never believed it at all. Sawyer knew it wasn’t you within an hour of their meeting, I’m told. Because it had no fear, no vulnerability. But as different as you seemed…I didn’t know. I wouldn’t see.”

“Different how?”

“Callous, in a way you never were with me. I shot a man dead, right in front of it. It was mildly amused. Arrogant, all the time. Sometimes you were cocky, when you wanted to know something and were willing to challenge me for it. I pretended to know much more than I actually did, and withheld more than I had to, and frustrated you very much. But the monster already had all the answers and knew exactly what to do, and it held that knowledge over my head at every opportunity. I didn’t disguise my bitterness, and it said that now I knew what it was like to be you. I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I do regret that. Everything was a game you couldn’t win, or a test you had to pass with no information at all. I should have spoken to you plainly.”

“I didn’t mean…just go on.”

“The monster had an interest in me, right away. I pretended to have believed you’d be back. It wanted to know my plans, so I came up with some. I had to get away, try to salvage my real plan somehow. Maybe get to our people before you could, as if it would make a difference. I said I was going to be judged by the monster, for coming back, because you wouldn’t have wanted to see that. I’d thought about it on the mainland, but only in abstract terms. Only as punishment for Alex. It figured that out very quickly, and decided to escort me. So there I was, trapped. Caught in a lie within a lie, watching a dead man walk and talk, guilty enough to feel I owed you some kind of allegiance. Terribly confused. Floundering so badly that I actually wondered whether I’d really killed you, or if I’d somehow done it wrong and should do it again. And the thing I thought was you seemed to feel nothing at all. Nothing showed on the outside. It was like looking into a mirror. And I thought…”

He knows his face is flushed with shame, but his closing throat seems like a more pressing problem. He thinks he’ll choke on his water, but it goes down smoothly. “Say it,” John says. 

“I thought that was a good thing. Because I had it right. I could take anything. You felt too much, and showed too much, and that was your downfall. If you were like me, I wouldn’t have to look at you and see all the things I was lacking. The things I wanted most. It was easy to give a nonsensical explanation of your murder, because it didn’t seem to matter to you. Nothing much did. The monster only asked about it out of curiosity. It was bored and flippant, it wanted me to entertain it. And I was reminded of—”

He loses his breath abruptly and isn’t entirely successful in taking another without an audible gasp. There’s no wobbling chin this time, no warning at all. His eyes are full of tears. John is watching him, but he doesn’t dare look up. He can’t cry now. He has to get through this. It’s for John, not him. He knows some old tricks to stop himself, most from childhood, but he hasn’t used them in ages. A vicious bite to the inside of his cheek used to work. He tries it. Pressure doesn’t have the same effect as pain, but it’s distracting enough to clear his eyes and let him go on. 

“I was reminded of the night you came to me, looking for the submarine. When we barely had a history, and argued over abstractions. When everything was so much simpler, even if it felt like the end of the world. I’d only lied to you, and lies can be amended. I could pretend we were back there, with our roles completely reversed. I could be as flippant as you were. I could accept any amount of arrogance and mockery from you, if it led to _something_. If I’d come out of it knowing what the Island wanted from me, and what my ultimate purpose would be. If it was to die, then I would die, but I’d die _knowing_. And I began to understand that it was so much harder to be you than it was to be me. You were the strong one. You could take anything I threw at you, but you shouldn’t have had to.”

John’s lip quivers, and he folds his arms very tightly. “Who else was I gonna be?” he says. “I couldn’t pretend.”

“Because you were the better man.”

Ben tells him about the trip under the temple, the monster’s deception and threat, the shock of being spared. It’s all as immediate and vivid in his mind as yesterday, and if he focuses on the images, the words aren’t so hard to say. He sees how thoroughly he was fooled, watching the real John limp out of the jungle to be used by a monster neither of them can see. He hears the words and sees it done, but does nothing to stop it, because he can’t imagine what’s really happening, or what’s to come. He can’t change it, can’t do anything but stand in amazement and ignore the inner warning that something is wrong, the memory of the dread he felt the night he killed John. The monster breaks all their precious protocols and uses John’s position to deflect any protests. Ben’s fear comes out as irritation, as dark sarcasm, like it did when he was being usurped. He can see the monster’s mocking smile as he swears his obedience to it. 

He can feel his heart dropping all the way down to his feet when the monster reveals its intentions for Jacob, and his stomach threatening to exit through his mouth when he’s told he’ll be the one wielding the knife. Ben hears the monster laying out all the ways Jacob has failed him and let him suffer, with none of John’s mercy. All his buried resentments come to the surface, and Jacob does nothing to push them back down. His words are cruel and thoughtless, like Dad’s, but he’s only a man, too. He can be killed, quickly and easily, and Ben is adrift. There’s no one to lead him, not even to lead him badly and desert him in the end. He has no power, no people, no safe place in the world. He watches Jacob turn to ash, feeling very young and terribly lost. The monster changes things, as it promised it would, and Ben finds himself in the sand with the corpse he made. 

“I don’t know how long I sat there,” he says. “Staring. For a second, I could believe it wasn’t really happening. It had all been a test from the Island, and now that I’d failed, you’d get up and take back what was yours. You’d put everything right, starting with my miserable existence. Then I caught the smell. You weren’t getting up. I’d pushed you out of that body, that husk they’d dumped out of its box for everyone to gawk at. I stared, and waited to wake up.”

“Did it kill them then?” John says, his voice hollow, his question almost obligatory. 

“No, that was later. I was dragged back inside by a team of men who’d come to guard Jacob. It killed them all. When I tried to leave, it crept up behind me and took your form again, revealing itself. And there it was, the dread I felt in my hotel room that night. Made solid, but not alive the way I was alive. Just a copied shape with no relation to the original, like the ghost of my mother when I was a boy, walking in the woods behind the sonar fence. It followed me all my life, relishing my capacity for violence, nudging me toward the day it could finally use me to kill Jacob and escape this place. It made jokes, but I think it wanted me to be afraid. It still had some use for me and needed me to remain compliant. When I questioned it, it only wanted to talk about you. It told me…it said your last thought was that you didn’t understand.” 

John makes no move to hide his tears, seems barely aware of them, but holds his mouth very tightly. Ben tries the bite again, but it barely works. “I followed it back out onto the beach,” he says quietly. “I watched it knock Richard out and carry him away. Powerless. I could see you, the real you, so clearly in my mind’s eye. The way you looked at me when I was doing something awful. The way you smiled sometimes when you knew I was playing a game with you, or when we knew something the others didn’t. The way you tried to go with me to turn the wheel, and squeezed my hand as we said goodbye. The way you cried to me in the motel. That man was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. I’d taken him out of the world and put a monster in his place, and I’d done it for nothing. There was just enough time to bury you, but none to properly grieve. Only an impromptu funeral and a clumsy eulogy. I said you were a better man than I’d ever be, and I was very sorry I’d murdered you. There was no comfort for me, and no respite for any of us. Only more running, more terror, more pain.”

He goes on, and it isn’t long before he comes to Ilana. To the gun and the grave, to the mad run through the jungle and the terrible, wonderful moment of complete exposure. Telling her the unvarnished truth felt like speaking a language he barely knew, but she understood. Her mercy still fills him with awe, and he hears the reverent tone that creeps into his voice every time he talks about her. The way people of faith talk about their saints and saviors. “She could have let me go begrudgingly, or after a long interrogation, and I couldn’t have blamed her. But she didn’t. I never understood it, never forgot it or stopped trying to be worthy of it. I never got to know her. She died soon after in a stupid, slapstick way that didn’t suit her at all. I reasoned that the Island was done with her. As it was with me. My death seemed like a foregone conclusion, but I was still doing all I could to survive. For a while, I was still afraid. The Island would have to make a solid effort if it wanted me gone.”

Ben trembles through an account of that awful night camping with the monster, and the secrets it held up for mocking. The dreams some part of it recognized, and missed. John flushes a deep red, rubs his head and gives that bitter laugh again.

“I’m so glad you told me all that,” he says. “I’m glad I came here today, it’s been really helpful.” The last word ends in a soft sob.

“If I had better things to tell you…”

“It doesn’t matter what you tell me. It’ll never make any sense. I was already used up when I came here. I didn’t need that thing making me think it was beautiful while it made a weapon out of me. I didn’t need to be anybody’s pawn. It would have meant so much to me, to be worth more than that to somebody…Couldn’t you see that? Couldn’t you at least _try_ to talk to me?”

It’s hard to breathe now. He wonders for a second if still he has to. “I couldn’t see past myself. I thought I didn’t have anything you would want. If everything had stopped for just a moment, if we’d had a time and place…” 

“You wouldn’t have let that happen. You know that. I could never win with you, all the way up until the end, but you’re the one who got to know. You got to live out your life knowing you weren’t crazy or stupid to think you saw something, and to feel for somebody.”

“You weren’t. I was, to do what I did. That’s what living with it taught me. I missed you every day.”

John sighs and wipes his eyes. “Just get to the end, will you? I need to get out of here.”

He forces himself to hurry through the last of it, knowing he’ll be alone then. He comes to his and Hugo’s new roles, to what Hugo said about what John might have been. “Richard said he never understood how you were special. Because even he didn’t know about the candidates. Jacob wanted it to be you, and the monster knew that. It knew you’d be the end of it. Hugo did a beautiful job, and I’m sure he still does, but you were made for it. You knew this place like no one else ever did. You were everything Jacob wasn’t. You should have lived forever. I was only meant to serve, not to interfere, and certainly not to lead.” 

John doesn’t react. Ben recounts the last he heard of the survivors’ lives, with most of them still alive at the time of his departure. He tells John how he died and when. They’re silent in the end, arms wrapped around themselves, bodies slumped, not looking at each other. John turns to go, then turns back. 

“I forgave all your lying and sneaking,” he says softly. “I forgave you for showing me that pit full of corpses, then leaving me in it. But you had to do one more awful goddamn thing in the end. And now I know why, but I’m never gonna understand.”

“If I could go back right now and take your place, I would.”

His eyes fill again. “But, it wouldn’t have been like that. I never would have hurt you, Ben, not for anything. I would have taken you out of there and brought you home with me. Because I missed you, too. And I’m still dreaming about you.”

Ben has no hope of holding back his tears now. He can only say one word. “John.”

John’s breath catches, and he moves forward, almost imperceptibly. For a split second, he looks as though he’ll keep moving. It’s the worst thing he could do right now, with nothing settled and so much still raw, but Ben hopes he won’t stop. This pain will draw them together. He’ll touch John with heavy hands, guilt overpowering pleasure. He’ll infect the wound he’s made, and it will never close. Every word they say to each other will be loaded and ultimately pointless. They’ll grow bitter and bored, and have eternity to tear each other apart. He still wants to stand up and cross the distance. They could steal some joy here and there, before they had to remember again. And again, and again. It would be hell, he knows. But he wouldn’t say no. John is still the strong one.

“I gotta go,” he says, already walking away, his voice barely audible. 

Ben watches him, then lets his head fall into his hands. It’s over. He didn’t cease to exist or die all over again. He breathes deeply, and feels as though his lungs will never quite fill. The truth was a physical object, it seems, lodged in his chest for decades. For a while, he feels the same relief he did when his tumor was removed. Then the void begins to ache. He tells himself he won’t wonder whether John will be back, or when, or what would happen if he did return. But he starts counting the days anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a long separation, Ben and John have a tentative visit. Later, John returns to Ben's house for an evening of frank conversation, assisted by whiskey.
> 
> From my original LiveJournal posts, the songs for this chapter are "Case of You" by Joni Mitchell, "Loving Cup" by The Rolling Stones, and "Andvari" by Sigur Rós.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not using the canon afterlife scenes or concepts at all. This conclusion to my Summerland Trilogy will have a happy ending that's 100% real. The other characters listed appear only in conversation or flashbacks.

Sooner or later, he’s going to run out of books. On every reread, he tries in vain not to think about it. With eternity ahead of him, he doesn’t need to lose his most significant pastime. Over the years, he acquired more and more books, until they threatened to push him out of his house. Hugo laughed and said it was like Bilbo Baggins’ house. They turned the old Welcome Center into a library and filled it to bursting, and Ben found himself with a second job. He came to know their people’s tastes better than they did, always ready with a recommendation, even when he had to call on a lifetime of deceit to keep from cringing at it. 

He helped the children with their schoolwork and taught a little now and then, some history or literature or sanitized stories of the Island’s previous tenants. He envied those children. They were safe in a way he’d never been, with choices he couldn’t have imagined, but he envied the parents more. Nothing they were doing for the Island would drive a wedge between them and their children. They’d never inspire a young girl to open rebellion, armed with nothing but a slingshot and her father’s guile. He was always amazed at how similar they could be without a drop of shared blood, and shocked at how different they were by the end. 

On his millionth walk around the barracks, he notices something strange in the schoolhouse. Shapes in the windows, white rectangles. He opens the door and is buried in an avalanche of books. They knock him to the ground, and he smacks his head into the sidewalk. He waits for the pain to come. It doesn’t, yet again, but he doesn’t spare it a thought, because there are _books_. He begins to examine them and soon finds that he hasn’t read a single one. Some are centuries old, some published after his death. There are things he’s always enjoyed, a broad sampling of history, science fiction and theology, and some topics and genres he’s never tried before. He looks up into the schoolhouse. Books are stacked from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with barely a space in between for him to walk. He gets up and moves carefully among the stacks, mouth open, eyes wide. 

He doesn’t understand what he’s done to deserve this gift. He’d give up the indestructibility and selective hunger in a second, if that was the price for this. But there’s no charge. Something is taking care of him, knowing all his needs and wants. Whether it’s the Island’s power reaching out to him beyond death, or some other divine thing he isn’t meant to know, he has no idea. All he knows is gratitude. He gathers up a tall stack of books and closes the door carefully. It’ll take him quite a while to read through all the others. And then there will be another batch, he feels certain. And another. He can’t stop smiling. 

 

Eventually, he stops counting the days since John was here, somewhere around ninety-seven. He tries to keep his mind elsewhere, and with so much to read, he succeeds half the time. He walks the barracks over and over, makes himself ravenously hungry so he can cook elaborate meals, goes to Hugo’s house to look at all the pictures on the walls and remember. He spends a great deal of his time sleeping, and there are days when he doesn’t leave his bed after he wakes, lost in thought and memory. He tries not to wait for John, knowing he could be waiting forever. 

One late morning, as he’s on his way to sit down at his desk with a new book, he catches sight of John through the front window. He has a large canvas bag full of something, and is placing it on the porch. Ben spends several minutes debating with himself about whether to open the door and greet him or not. Showing up here doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to talk, or to see Ben at all. But he lingers on the porch, looking around. He walks briskly away, then back again. He seems to steel himself, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, then disappears behind the door. And knocks. Ben moves to answer, his heart stuttering. 

John looks at him for a second, a flash of pain in his eyes before he turns away, walking past the bag he left. Ben crouches to open it. Ripe mangoes. He wouldn’t have thought to make a peace offering, if that’s what this is. He swallows hard and stands up. 

“Thank you,” he says.

“Yeah, well, they’re falling out of the trees, they’re so ripe. I figured you’d want some, but…I never see you out there.”

“Oh, I…I don’t want you to have to see me, and I don’t know where you might be, so I stay here.”

“You don’t have to do that. This is your place, too.”

“I don’t want to cause you any more pain.”

John moves toward one of the wooden pillars. Not the furthest one, Ben notes. “I’ll be okay. Go where you want.”

He pulls the strap of his pack forward, his hand wrapped tightly around it. He’s getting ready to go. “It’s hot today,” Ben blurts out. 

“Yeah.”

Ben picks up the bag. “I used to make sorbet out of these,” he says, feeling sillier by the second. Anything to keep him here a little longer. “It was Alex’s favorite. I have an ice cream freezer, it doesn’t take long. If you’d like some.”

There’s a long silence before John replies. “I don’t know why I brought those, to tell you the truth. We don’t have to eat anymore.”

“I know. It still feels good, though. It’s delicious sorbet, really.”

John looks up at the sky. Ben can see his cheek move, like he’s smiling. “Yeah,” he says. “That’d be nice.” He drops his pack on the ground in front of him and leans against the pillar. 

Ben hurries inside and goes about his task as quickly as he can. He spends the bulk of the freezing time deliberating over whether to go back outside and try to make conversation, looking out the window now and then to make sure John is still there. He hasn’t moved. He looks much more settled than Ben feels, but Ben doesn’t suppose he’s seeing the whole story from here. The freezer finally finishes its job. The sorbet is better than he remembered, sweet and tangy. Ben prepares two bowls and goes back outside. He tries not to get too close as he hands John his bowl, then sits on his bench.

"Mmm," John says, and for a second, it's a night in 2004 again, John in Ben's kitchen, appreciating his fried chicken. “It really is good.”

“Thank you.” 

They eat in silence for a few minutes. He wishes he could think of something to say, but not talking isn’t so bad. It’s familiar, at least. They’ve done this together before, stopping for sustenance on walking trips, holding their secrets close and each other at arm’s length. He always knew what would happen next in those days, or pretended he did. He lorded his power over John, never knowing the true nature of it.

“I missed the heat when I was away,” John says. “I was always cold.”

“So was I.”

“Couldn’t even run around and get a good sweat going, with my leg broken so bad.”

He tries not to stare at the wet patch on the back of John’s shirt, tries not to think too much about how he tried to replicate the Island’s heat while in exile. “I used to do something like that,” he admits. 

John doesn’t reply, continues to eat. It must be nearly gone by now. He should have put a few more scoops in. John goes still for a moment, full spoon poised an inch above his bowl.

“If I saw you out there,” he says, “it wouldn’t be like the first day. If that’s what you’re thinking. I…wasn’t expecting you. And I could see you weren’t, either.” 

“It was definitely a shock.”

He nods. “Don’t sit here your whole li…the whole time, not for my sake.”

“I won’t,” Ben says, wondering if he’ll be able to follow through. 

“I probably wouldn’t see you, anyway,” John adds. It sounds hasty to Ben, reluctantly added, but he doesn’t want to dwell on that. “There’s plenty of room for both of us.”

“True.” 

John finishes his sorbet and gives Ben his bowl. His fingers brush Ben’s. It’s miles away from a proper touch, but it sparks heat in Ben’s skin. He shoves a large bite of sorbet into his mouth as John turns to go, trying to cool himself. John turns back to him, but still won’t meet his eyes.

“I didn’t ask you how you were,” he says. “How it’s been for you, being here. Are you okay?”

Ben sighs soundlessly, still unable to comprehend how John can care about any of that now, can still care about him at all. How he can come here and talk about the weather or come anywhere close to urging Ben out into his space, instead of raging endlessly about what’s been done to him. “Compared to what you’ve been through, I’ve—”

John shakes his head. “Never mind what I’ve been through. I’m asking about you.”

“Well, it’s…different. Sometimes it’s very difficult. The first night was horrendous. But I’ve had some good times, too.”

He tells John about the books. John smiles a little. “Yeah, that’ll happen.”

“What has it given you?”

He presses his lips together. “I’ll tell you sometime.”

“I didn’t ask you how you were, either.”

“Some days are better than others. Today’s been all right.”

“I’m glad,” Ben says, for want of something better. John looks up at him. There’s that exposure again, that unguarded longing. Ben takes it in and returns it, aware on some distant level that he’s holding his breath. It’s not quite as frightening for him this time, or for John, it seems, but the pain is still there. He tries to focus on the want, tries to imagine how it would feel to see the pain magically vanish and leave only that, and feels more selfish than he has in quite a while. More greedy. When John looks away again, it’s like a loss of something tangible, a warm hand slipping from cool skin. 

“Thanks for the sorbet,” John says. “I’ll see you…sometime.”

“I hope so.”

John lingers for a second before walking away. At the tree line, he looks back, too far away for Ben to see what’s in his eyes. He starts walking again without watching where he’s going and nearly runs into a tree, arm shooting out to stop himself at the last minute. He’s gone quickly afterwards. Ben sits stunned for a moment, then dissolves into chuckles. He’s still laughing as he washes the bowls, almost giddy. He’s not entirely sure what to make of that visit, but he knows what it wasn’t. No harsh words, no tears, no new layers added to John’s pain. Just the two of them asking after each other’s well-being and sharing a bit of food. Like people. He tries not to think of it as progress toward any goal. It doesn’t mean he’ll ever be forgiven. All the same, he can’t resist a little thrill of hope. If they’ve come this far, maybe they can keep going. 

Over the next long stretch of time without him, Ben wonders what John does out there, what it must be like for him to have it all to himself, safe from harm and manipulation. He sees John out in the green, in his element, free but still hurting. Still thinking of Ben. There must have been a couple dozen mangoes in the bag. They stay perfectly, pungently ripe, but don’t reappear. He eats one each day, thinking of John’s hand on it, of the bag slung over his back or held to his chest as he made his way to the barracks. Sometimes he slices them with a hunting knife. Sometimes he only cuts the peel away and takes huge bites of the flesh, letting the sticky juice run down his face and neck, onto his chest. 

 

He wouldn’t have thought he’d miss much about being old. He’s still the man he became in peacetime, with whatever wisdom he gained and plenty of regret, but with a body that will never age another day. The Island made aging easier than it would have been on the mainland, but he was still faced with his own inevitable decline. His joints full of pebbles on the wettest days, his glasses growing steadily thicker and heavier, his energy sapped to a degree that frightened him sometimes. He can’t get over how good he feels these days, but there are things he could do without. There’s nowhere for all this lust to go.

He was still buying time with professionals just a few years before his death, but the need subsided eventually. Now it’s back with a vengeance. His mind knows full well why John isn’t here with him right now, but his body doesn’t care. It knows how close John is, for the first time in decades, and wants what it wants. There’s nothing for it but his own hand. He only touches himself in the shower, a rule he set eons ago and could never manage to break, even on the mainland. It was the only safe place in the house back in his bad old days, where even if his men burst in with some emergency while he was occupied, he’d have a chance to stop and make himself presentable. They wouldn’t expect him to lead them stark naked, after all. He never quite figured out what he’d do if they came in at the crucial moment, when he couldn’t hear a thing. Some possibilities were too terrifying to contemplate. He still finds himself holding out, denying the need for release as long as he possibly can, but that’s much shorter here than it once was. At the height of his power, he could go for weeks, eventually forcing his body to take care of it while he slept. Or until he’d slipped from raising his voice at his underlings to actively fantasizing about braining them with his baton, and knew he had to give in. 

Every time he does it, he wishes he knew more about this part of John. What he liked best, how pleasure made him look and sound, what exactly the monster meant with its taunts about John’s desires and talents. He pretends he and John are squeezed into the little shower stall together, or in Ben’s bed, or somewhere out in the jungle. Ben is on his knees, sucking deeply and slowly, John’s pulse on his tongue. John is under him, sometimes yielding, sometimes pushing back with every thrust, his face hot under Ben’s hand. It’s harder to imagine it the other way around, and he wishes he’d paid for that, at least once. He tries to imagine some portion of his pleasure turned inward, or focuses on how John’s body might feel on top of him or behind him. Hard in some places and soft in others, he supposes, and very strong. He makes John come with him, relishing his deep quiver and collapse. Holding him very tightly as their hearts slow down, and holding off his own guilt for as long as he can. 

He relies on images that can prolong the mindless fog of pleasure without making it spike again. Deeply tanned skin that smells of the rich soil and fleshy plants he’s been sleeping in. Long, deep, slow kisses, the two of them aware of nothing outside each other. Finding all each other’s scars and telling their stories. The blast door must have left an interesting one in John’s thigh. It was always strange to find pictures from before the crash and see that face without the scars above his eye and down his cheek. Like part of him was missing. It seems fitting that he arrived indelibly marked, in a place everyone could see. _This is the one_ , the Island was saying. _This is my creature_. And Ben put his own marks there, but ultimately left him so clean that an autopsy was never considered. That thought always puts an abrupt end to the others. He lifts his hot cheek from the cold tile, lets go of the showerhead, turns off the now-lukewarm water. What felt almost satisfying in the moment now seems more like he was only teasing himself. The monster would laugh at him, now more than ever. He wouldn’t have had to imagine much at all, if he’d asked all the questions he could have asked. If he’d let the monster demonstrate, and given up all hope of surviving and becoming a better man. 

There are days when it seems that giving in to temptation would have been more than worth it, but then he wonders if he would have ended up here in the end. He could have been punished much more harshly than he’s ever been, could have gone somewhere so horrible that all his worst suffering in life would become a fond memory. He wonders where the monster is now, with all its guises stripped away and its only wish left unfulfilled. He hopes it hurts. He hopes Jacob can make peace with the man he loved and destroyed, knowing full well that his wish is more for himself and John than anyone else. 

Ben walks out into the jungle a few times, but sees no sign of John, and doesn’t venture very far. He stays put most of the time, but there’s only so much reading and dreaming and fantasizing he can do. Frustration sets in, stronger than he’s ever felt before. He knows there’s no cure for it, beyond an extensive and immediate change in circumstances. All he can do is blunt it, one way or another. One night, he sets about getting drunk. He sits out on his porch with a bottle of whiskey, not bothering with a glass. He almost drops it when John walks into the barracks.

“Hi,” John says. He doesn’t look away this time, but he’s just far enough away to be unreadable. Ben answers automatically, determined to hold his gaze. 

“Hello, John.”

John motions at the bottle. “Doing a little drinking?”

“Doing a lot of drinking, actually.” 

“Got any to spare?”

“Sure, I’ll get you a bottle.” He moves to do so, already wobbling a bit. 

“No, I…” John says, and Ben turns back to find him several steps closer. “I thought I might stick around.”

“Did you?”

“If you don’t mind the company.”

“Of course not. I’ll go get you a glass.” He’s a step away from the door when John speaks again.

“I could come with you.”

He feels his eyes go wide and tries to rein himself in before he turns back to John. “You want to come in?”

For a second, he looks terrified. Ben remembers all that hesitation before John knocked at his door last time, and understands. This is something John feels he needs to do, even though he has to push himself very hard to do it. This is his progress. 

“Yeah, I think I do,” John says. “Just for a little while. Just to talk.”

It probably won’t be a terribly short conversation, if he doesn’t want to stand around out here again. Ben imagines revisiting the murder or that night with the monster, in even greater detail, and sighs inside. It won’t be any easier drunk, but he’ll do it without complaint. “All right.”

John might as well be reading his mind. “Not about what happened. We can think of other things to talk about. Can’t we?”

He thinks of their dream conversations, with a faint hope that he can approximate some part of them for John, in a way that won’t hurt. “I’m sure we can,” he says. “Please, come in.”

Ben moves toward the door, opens it and motions for John to enter. “You go ahead,” John says softly.

He’s confused for a second, but that memory is never out of his grasp. He walked behind John with the extension cord. He could apologize, and fail to comply with John’s request right out of the gate. Ben keeps his mouth shut and steps into the house, and John follows. That part goes smoothly, at least. God knows what the rest of the night will be like. 

He tries not to fixate on John’s presence as he fetches two glasses from the kitchen, glancing up once to see John settling into the living room chair. Ben’s own chair, in his own house, where John hasn’t been since the year they first met. It’s like an optical illusion. One that catches him looking and offers a tight, nervous little smile, an assurance that it’s not about to disappear. He returns it for a second, then stares hard at the glasses. On the way to the sofa, he stubs his toe on the coffee table, hard enough to bleed. He’s had a few of these minor accidents now, never with anything like pain. There’s no getting used to it. He looks down at his bare, unmarked foot, his brows knitting. 

“Weird, huh?” John says, smiling wide this time. Something in Ben starts to uncoil. It’s all he can do not to sigh with relief as he sits on the sofa opposite John.

“Yes, very much so.”

“Doesn’t feel like anything.”

“No.”

They sip their drinks in silence for what feels like at least an hour. Ben begins to feel the effects of the whiskey, his body warm and loose through the joints, but it’s not exactly flooding his mind with appropriate topics of conversation. This is exactly how tipsy he’d be by the time the hired woman or man would come knocking at his hotel room door. Right about now, he’d be handing over the money and telling them what he wanted, in as few words as possible, looking anywhere but at their faces. If John asked him that question now, motivated by desire instead of profit, maybe Ben could look. He cuts off the thought before it can go any further. Save it for the shower. 

“You try jumping off a cliff yet?” John says, an excited glint in his eyes. 

Ben begins to smile. “Should I?”

“As soon as you get the chance. You know it’s not gonna hurt, so you’re not scared. But the best part is a second or two before you hit bottom. You can feel the air rushing by, and you’re going so fast. It’s like flying.”

“Sounds good.”

“Jumping’s a lot better than falling. You really haven’t tried it?”

“No.”

“What have you tried?”

“Cutting myself, hitting myself with a hammer, sticking silverware in the outlets…”

John laughs. “I did that when I was a kid. Once.”

Ben laughs with him, a pleasant little shock moving through him at the sound of it, at the fact that they can do this now. John stops and stares. Maybe they can’t do this after all. 

“What is it?” Ben says, but John’s smile makes his unease fade away.

“Nothing,” John says. “I guess I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Well. I probably didn’t give many demonstrations when you knew me.”

“I think you scoffed at me once or twice. You were always laughing at everybody, just not out loud.”

He smirks. “No one appreciated my humor.”

“No, I did. That thing about the hamster wheel, that was pretty good.”

He grins. “I didn’t think you liked that one very much.”

“It wasn’t the information I was looking for. But if I could have said what I liked about you…” He takes another drink. Ben wants to press for more, but doesn’t, still sober enough to be afraid of ending this prematurely. 

“I’ve tried this before,” John says, tilting his glass toward Ben. 

He’s instantly nervous again, unprepared for a sober evening’s chat. “It does work, doesn’t it?”

“To a point. You get plenty drunk, you just don’t pass out or get sick. You hit a plateau and don’t go over it. No hangover, either.”

“None of the bad parts, then.”

His smile fades. “You can still get pretty sad. Doesn’t help if you already were, though. Drinking and crying is…” he chuckles. “Not a fun combination.”

“No, it isn’t.” He did it once early in his exile, and once on his first mainland trip under Hugo’s employ. Mourning Alex, then John, with all he had. Making an unrecognizable wreck of himself. Both times, he woke up afterwards with an awe-inspiring hangover and a new sense of loss. Wishing he could have called up all that feeling sober, that he could have shown them what was inside him before it was too late. “It doesn’t do much good. And it’s awfully…sloppy.” 

“That’s one word for it.”

They refill their glasses and drink quietly for another long while, until John speaks again. 

“I remember the last time you offered me booze. In your tent, fighting about Jacob.”

“Yes.”

“You looked a little put out when I wouldn’t take the glass from you.”

“I suppose I was. That happened a lot when I tried to be charming and hospitable.”

“You were pretty mad when we left. With everybody watching us.” He laughs. “And me watching you.”

He remembers the hot rush of anger, his hatred of the smile he could see in his peripheral vision, but finds that he can laugh about it now, too. “That was infuriating.”

John’s smile turns impish. “I was just eating my mango.”

“Yes. Infuriatingly.”

“It was really hard not to laugh at you. I was waiting for steam to shoot out of your ears.”

“You enjoyed it that much?”

“You were just so put together all the time. All buttoned down, always three steps ahead of everybody else. It was interesting to see what rattled you.” He laughs and rubs his head. “The cabin sure did.” 

Ben scoffs. “You were the first one out, if I recall correctly.”

“You bet your ass I was. I wasn’t gonna stick around to put the lantern back.”

“Is that what I did? That part is a blur."

John nods. “I thought I’d have to carry you away from there, you looked about ready to pass out.”

He wonders for a second how it would have been to wake up to that, but knows full well how completely he would have wasted the moment, with cold silence, a sarcastic jab, anything to hide how much he enjoyed the closeness. How starved he was for it. “I probably was.” 

“Do you remember camping after that?”

“Yes.”

John looks into his glass, tilts it this way and that. “That was one of the times I thought I saw something. Right before we fell asleep.”

“When I was looking at you.”

He nods again. “You did,” Ben says softly.

John smiles a little and stays quiet for a time. Ben glances at John’s hand on his glass, sees clean fingernails. It’s the same with his skin and clothes, all freshly scrubbed. He’d look good to Ben under ten layers of dirt, as he has in the past, but knowing the effort it takes to get this clean out there makes it oddly touching. And enticing. He can imagine John at the stream or under the waterfalls, anticipating this visit, making himself ready for it. His hands moving over his skin as he washed, in broad swipes and small circles, drifting lower and lower. His body as hungry and heedless of their circumstances as Ben’s own. Ben downs the rest of his drink in one swallow and pours another. He has no hope of avoiding these thoughts with John so close, but maybe drunkenness still has one negative effect here. Try as he might, he can’t think of a discreet way to pull a throw pillow over his lap and keep it there all night.

“But then,” John says, “I thought it might just be a way to get me over there so you could put me out of commission. Not in a fun way. But maybe…you were just looking.”

“I was. I was too tired to think about everything else. Too scared. And I couldn’t have imagined you wanting to come over. I thought it was only me, all the way up until…But, the way you looked in the firelight, I…well, I had to look.”

There’s that little smile again, and an almost imperceptible straightening of his posture. Ben wonders how long it’s been since anyone has spoken to John this way. It could be as long ago as Helen, years before the crash. He hopes John will continue asking him to validate some look or other. Ben could do this all night, making them up if he had to. Building John up as surely as he was torn down all his life, trying to make up for his own part in all that. He relishes the strange and wonderful sensation of being able to say these things out loud. 

John seems lost in thought, then looks up with an inward quirk of his eyebrow. “Did you kill your father?”

There’s no accusation in his tone, just curiosity, but Ben is speechless. Some of his people knew, but no one else has ever asked. John laughs. “Sorry,” he says. “Not much of a segueway there.”

Ben laughs with him. “Is that what that was?”

“I was just thinking, about some other things I saw. Like when you had my father tied to that pillar, and the look in your eyes, how sure you were. It wasn’t your first time up there. I could see you doing it. In my mind, he looked like you.”

“He didn’t really. And it didn’t happen there, but yes, I did kill him. You have a good eye.”

“No regrets?”

“I’m sorry for a lot of things, but never that. I didn’t even bother to bury him. I regret ever having known him at all.”

“So, he was like mine.”

“He was, in that he made his child suffer. Otherwise, not much. Yours was very good at what he did. He didn’t particularly care whether he caused pain, it was irrelevant. Mine was a drunk and a failure who passed all his misery on to me when he couldn’t handle it himself. Usually with his fists.”

John’s eyes are full of the sympathy Ben sometimes saw in the old days, and more. It’s too much. He doesn’t deserve it, even with some part of his hurt still there, after all these years. “That’s awful,” John says.

“Well, he never stole any of my internal organs or actively tried to kill me, so I think you still win this round.” 

John’s smile is very small and knowing, and his eyes don’t change. Ben knows he can make light of it if he likes, but John won’t be deterred. It’s too fine a thing to look away from. At least the whiskey keeps him from trembling on the outside. 

“Maybe,” John says, “maybe not. It’s hard to say which is worse, because it’s always worse when it’s happening to you. I’m sure there were times when we would have been happy to switch places with each other.”

“I suppose so. We would have been hurt either way. We’d only learn different things. Roger Linus would have taught you to keep still when you were being beaten. You could cower and cry as much as you needed to, but getting away was out of the question. If he had to chase you, it would be worse. If you learned to observe him, to estimate how drunk and how angry he was, you could anticipate his attack. You could figure out where he’d hit you and how hard. With the shock and fear removed, it wouldn’t hurt as badly. You could live through it, you could live through anything. Later in life, when you’d run afoul of some other set of fists, you’d be able to take it. You’d barely flinch. If it became necessary to cower convincingly, you could always remember how. You could lie to anyone about anything, having done it over and over to avoid punishment and to cover your escapes, when you had to seek out your own people or lose your mind. You could be some semblance of the boy you once were.”

“Is that why you kept driving people to it? To prove yourself?”

“That was part of it. I had to know _how_ to drive them to it, so that in the process, they’d show me more about themselves than they ever would have otherwise. And they’d always make the mistake of assuming I was no longer a threat, at least for the time being. While they were savoring their small victory, I’d have some time to figure out how to use it against them.”

John grins. “You had fun doing that.” 

“Yes. At the time, it was a great game. And it saved my life more than once. There were times I might have thanked my father, if I could have. He taught me a great deal. And then there was the temple pool. There was something in it we didn’t talk about. You could come out corrupted beyond recognition, never the same person again. Or you could remain yourself, but harder, colder. My father was all I had at that time. All I’d ever had. In spite of everything, I still loved him. I only hated his cruelty. There were good days sometimes, as long as I didn’t question him too much. I tried to take care of him, taking his shoes off when he’d passed out on the sofa, taking the drink from his hand. I never made the slightest noise when he was hung over, walked on eggshells the rest of the time. He rewarded me with the worst vitriol, with blame for my mother’s death in childbirth. My premature birth, like yours. I wished desperately that he’d change and things would get better. I could still hope for that, in spite of everything. If I could only be good enough, he might forgive me for being born. It all went with me into that pool, and when I woke, it was still there, but it wasn’t so overwhelming anymore. I could put it away and go on. What I couldn’t compartmentalize in any given moment, I could hide behind a mask only you would see through for any significant amount of time. I already had those budding talents, I wouldn’t have made it all the way to twelve otherwise. I never would have gotten any sleep. The pool let me master those skills, long before I would have on my own. It gave me what my leadership would demand, or so I thought. With my own weaknesses suppressed, I could easily find and exploit those of others. I could be as cold as I liked, whenever I liked, which was quite often, for a very long time. He’d never see me cry again.”

John’s eyes are distant, and Ben can see the noxious memory of Anthony Cooper in them. “I would have switched places with you for that.”

He tries to imagine John with all his fire pushed down deep, his eyes a practiced blank, lying with every breath. It’s almost on par with seeing him dead. “It would only have diminished you.”

“My father saw me hurt way too many times. Laughed about it. I would have liked to be all calm and cool around him, just once. Throw it right back in his face.”

“I understand. But you saw how unreliable it was. You can only put away so much, for so long. It all comes out eventually, destructively. When you grow past it, you’re left with a mold that takes far too long to break from. I wouldn’t have wished the losses it caused me on anyone, least of all you.”

John nods and is quiet for a time, then says, “What did your father think about all that, you getting shot and disappearing?”

“I was told that he was very upset, even regretful about how he’d treated me. When I came back, he was gentle for a while, almost deferential to me, but of course, that wore off eventually. He tried to start up our old routine again, drinking, working up his anger until I’d committed some infraction, whether real or imagined, I don’t remember. He raised his hand to slap me. I didn’t cower. I remembered the fear, but I didn’t feel it at all. It stayed in its box, at a safe distance. I stared at him, and he stared back, unnerved and confused. Maybe even a little frightened. Something was different, but he couldn’t figure out what. And then he lowered his hand, and for a child like me…well, it seemed like magic. He walked away, and I felt very powerful. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. No one could. It wasn’t true, of course, but it was a pleasant thought. I was no longer the household punching bag. I’d been promoted to household oddity, and would remain so for quite some time. He never said anything about it, and I wasn’t about to argue with such a gift. He looked at me like I was a strange new device that might blow up in his face. I let him. I enjoyed being mysterious.”

John’s eyes twinkle, on the verge of crumpling with laughter. “Really? I never would have guessed.”

Ben sputters a bit, then laughs with John again. It’s so easy to do. He hopes it isn’t just the alcohol. “Really,” he says. “I could be awfully cagey, believe it or not.”

“Sometimes I don’t. This is hard to get used to.”

“Which part?”

“The part where I ask you questions and you answer them.” He chuckles. “It’s a little different. I could ask you a million questions.”

“You can ask me anything.”

Their eyes lock. It would be easy to leap over the coffee table at John, but Ben knows he can’t. When or if it comes, the invitation has to be absolutely clear. He can’t impose his will on John again, in the slightest way, even when he knows John wants it, too. John doesn’t look away this time, leaning forward, fascinated. 

“When you did it…” John says. “Was it easy?”

“Yes. Even after things changed at home, I was still stuck there with him. For years and years and years. The janitors didn’t merit separate houses. There was no growing up and moving out for me. We tried to keep to ourselves, but in close quarters, you can’t avoid seeing each other. He drank himself into a kind of constant low-grade stupor, old and weak before his time. Sometimes he made friendly overtures to me, like he wanted to be a better father, when it was already much too late. I’d come to feel nothing but contempt for him. He was no threat to me, but every time I saw his face, I had to remember. I had to put up with him, day after day. I had to be very patient. All the time, I was focused on the last day, when I’d take my rightful place. I thought killing him would feel better than it did. Sitting there with him, watching the time, I thought of my mother. I asked him if it was really my fault, but he had no answer. I couldn’t ask her, so there was no one to absolve me. I put on my gas mask and opened the canister.” 

“Was it quick?”

“Not quick enough. Like any Dharma product, it did the job, but without efficiency or finesse.”

John laughs and rubs his face with both hands. “That’s terrible.”

Ben smiles so wide he thinks his face might crack in two. “But you like that one, too.”

“Yeah, I do.” He’s quiet, then lapses into chuckles. Ben basks in it, an odd kind of afterglow. It’s almost painful to be brought back to the matter at hand.

“Did you watch?” John says.

Ben takes a deep breath, remembering the van, the wheezing and choking, the chemical smell that still seeped through the mask. “I thought I would. I thought it would be satisfying to see it happen, to know the exact moment he was gone and remember it for the rest of my life. But I couldn’t look at him, it was…too much. I could only listen, and avoid his flailing arms. I remembered loving him, and wishing and waiting for him to love me, too. I remembered my mother’s face, smiling next to him in the only picture he let me have, and wondered if she’d understand. And then he was quiet, a quiet like I’d never heard from him. There was always noise, whether his words were ugly or excruciatingly boring, whether he was throwing another beer can into the trash or snoring like his nose was motorized. Or crying for my mother in the middle of the night, when he thought no one would hear him. Never caring that I cried for her, too, that we were both adrift without her, that we should have had each other to rely on. In that moment, I didn’t feel bad or good, I was merely finished. But I left that van believing I’d set myself free and could do anything. In actuality, I was only free to leap from one bad father to another. By the time I figured that out, I’d lost everything.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

He knows he’s heard that from John before, out in the jungle with torches, Alex’s blood still on his hands. He shoves the memory away hard, but still has to swallow before he speaks. “Thank you.”

John stares at Ben for a moment, then quickly looks away. “Sometimes I still wish I could have done it.”

It’s not the fact of it that’s surprising, but the memory of looking into John’s eyes as he carried his father’s corpse into their camp and not seeing a lie. He could always read his adversaries in those days, break them down into useful components, but he was blind to so much of John. “You didn’t kill him.”

John’s jaw works. “No. I couldn’t.”

“Who did?”

“James. Richard gave me his file.”

Richard, with his secrets and his capricious mercies. He never gave Ben a clue about this, not even the last time they met, when it was all over and he could have said anything. “Because that was the man James was looking for.”

“Yeah. I told him I had you chained up in the Black Rock. Then I locked him in there, too. That was all I had to do. They started talking, and it came up.”

It’s been a long time since he’s taken pride in manipulation, but he remembers the feeling of seeing some of that tendency in John, oddly proud of him in the midst of their struggle. He said as much to John once, when John had persuaded Hugo that staying with them had been Hugo’s own idea. _I’m not you,_ John said, a blind strike that hit home instantaneously. He turned it against John, but that didn’t stop it from stinging. He can’t help smiling now. “That’s very clever, John.”

John shrugs. “I wouldn’t have known to do it without the file.”

“Anyone else might have blurted it all out to James and made him think they were crazy. You were smart about it.”

He grins. “You’re just saying that because that’s what you would have done.”

“Sure I would. But you’re the one who figured it out. You really got me, I had no idea.” 

John smiles, glances up and smiles a little wider. “Yeah, I guess I did.” 

The whiskey is having one of its intended effects, keeping his body from reacting too strongly to John’s presence, but Ben’s hands still itch to touch him. He needs something else to do with them, however brief. The bottle wasn’t full to begin with, and is now a fraction of an inch away from empty. He picks it up by the neck, shakes it a bit. “More?”

John chuckles. “Yeah, why not?” 

Ben gets up, takes a step and nearly stumbles to the floor, his head spinning for a second. He turns back to the sofa and barely avoids planting his face in the back cushions. 

“You okay there?” John says, suppressed laughter in his voice. 

Ben clings to the sofa’s arm, steadying himself. “I’m a little drunk,” he says sheepishly. “It’s been a long time, my tolerance isn’t what it was.”

“Uh huh. I probably should have told you this part is still pretty much the same.”

“Probably. I usually avoid getting up while this is going on.”

“I can see why you would. How about I go get it?”

“No, I’m all right.” He moves toward the kitchen with exaggerated care, but manages to fetch the other bottle and bring it back without incident, even with his vision blurring every time he turns his head. John takes it from him and does the pouring.

“Thank you,” Ben says.

“Yeah, you’re a little uncoordinated right now.”

“I must have looked ridiculous.”

“A little. I didn’t mind. I had a good time looking.”

Ben grins and feels his face go hot. He doesn’t look at John, instead giving him the opportunity to stare, hard and long, without having to decide whether to look away first. When the contact is broken, like a concentrated beam of heat leaving his skin, Ben’s thoughts turn back to Cooper.

“May I ask…why do you think you couldn’t kill him?”

John laces his fingers around the glass, moves one up and down. “I could have, before I got here. Right after he pushed me out that window, I _really_ could have. I had to live with what he did to me every day, and I hated him for it. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight sometimes. But here, I could leave all that behind. I didn’t have to think about him. And then, there he was. I wanted to do it, when you handed me the knife. I wanted him to pay for what he did, and never be able to hurt anybody again. But I couldn’t forget what he was to me before all that. I was passed around from family to family, growing up. Nobody had much time for me. I never got what I needed. He saw me, and made time for me, and made me believe I was important to him. Like I’d never been to anybody. I was afraid of him, like you said, after what he did to me. I never would have sought him out, but I couldn’t kill him. I could take all the pain he forced on me, but I couldn’t give it back.”

Ben remembers how cavalierly he made the decision to have Cooper brought here, how he kept telling himself that John wouldn’t pass all the tests and be one of them. The one they were waiting for. He never considered that John might still feel something for the man, aside from rage and hatred. “I didn’t know he still meant anything to you. It wouldn’t have stopped me then, but…I didn’t know.”

“Nobody really did. But I’m not sorry it happened to him, even if I didn’t clean up my own mess.” 

“I thought about doing it for you, just to get it over with, but didn’t get very far. I was afraid of what it might imply.”

John chuckles. “What, like a romantic gesture?”

“For me, at that time…that’s exactly what it would have been. And I would have been terrified.”

“Yeah, so would I. It’s not exactly a box of chocolates.”

“No. But a lot of things would have been different, from that point.”

John’s smile fades. “Maybe. That’s another talk for another day, though.”

“Right,” Ben says, unsure whether to kick himself for straying too close to forbidden topics or to be overjoyed at the idea of more talks. He tries to get them back on track, grinning. 

“He wasn’t one of our better guests,” he says. “All that biting. I was surprised he was housebroken, frankly.”

John laughs himself breathless. Ben watches him for a while, trying to remember the last time he was this happy, then shakes his head.

“I still can’t believe you shared a gene pool with that man. Maybe you really were immaculately conceived.”

John wipes his eyes. “Don’t I wish.” 

Ben chuckles. “This isn’t what people reminisce about on the mainland, is it?”

“No. Unless they’re criminals, I guess.”

“What do they talk about? When they’re drinking?”

“Same things they’d talk about here, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t know, I was always alone. This is all new to me.”

“They talk about other times they were drinking. Parties, that type of thing.”

“That’s a little redundant, isn’t it?”

“They’re not very interesting. Most of them.”

“That’s all they talk about?”

“That’s all I really remember. That and sex. Now that was a popular topic.”

His entire body tenses, and he finds himself conflicted again, between fear and excitement this time. “I see.”

John smiles. “Doesn’t mean we have to.”

“No, I…I’m all right, if you are. You can ask me anything, remember?”

“Okay.”

There’s a long silence. Ben prays for John to be the one to break it, and he does, eventually. “I’m curious as hell,” he says. “I just have no idea what to say.”

Ben thinks of his own curiosity about John in the shower and wonders if that’s part of what John means. He swallows hard. “It’s up to me, then.”

John shrugs and pours another drink. It’s a show of nonchalance that Ben doesn’t buy for a second, but he’s deeply grateful for it. This doesn’t have to be the secret, shameful thing you made of it all your life, it says to Ben. This is something we can talk about, like anything else that’s come up tonight or the other day. Just one more thing. He finds himself wanting to talk about it, for once. Wanting someone to know and understand what he’s done. He takes a breath and sighs it out, then begins.

“I’ve never talked about it much. Even with the ones I was having it with.”

“Well, that’s hard sometimes. Easier to do it than talk about it. Helen could talk about it, she could talk about anything.”

He bites back a surge of jealousy, surprised at its intensity. Ridiculous. She’s not here and isn’t coming. He hopes. “Could she?”

“Yeah. She was easy to be with. Never had to wonder what she thought or felt.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“It was. I was really lucky, till I messed it up. You ever do that? I mean, not with…You know what I mean.”

“I never had that kind of relationship. I was never with anyone I hadn’t paid for their time.”

He gulps his whiskey. He can feel John’s eyes on him, pressing on him when he’s already lightheaded enough to fall off the sofa and through the floor. He’s done it now. No one ever knew the whole story of John’s murder, but they knew he’d done it, at least. This was the secret he never told anyone, the one he took to his grave. The heat of embarrassment is absolutely scalding, but it doesn’t last. There’s no judgment in John’s eyes, only warm interest. Ben finds himself much more ready for this than he could have imagined. He can answer anything. He can let John lead him. 

“So, you…” John says, having leaned a fraction of an inch closer while Ben wasn’t looking. “Huh.”

“You’re not surprised.”

“Well…no, not really. It’s not too far off from what I suspected.”

“What did you suspect?”

“That nobody was touching you. Or they weren’t doing it right, or nearly enough. Either way, you were thinking too much and feeling too little.”

He stares for a bit, pleasantly taken aback. “There’s that eye again.”

“I guess.”

“What was it about me?”

“It was a lot of things. I didn’t expect the barracks at all. And I really didn’t expect you to live in a house, with a neat little bedroom and single bed. Way too civilized. And those pajamas.”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “What about them?”

He’s holding back laughter again, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “Nothing, they were very nice. Very suburban dad. Or grandpa.”

“That’s the look I was going for, for your information.”

“Good job, then.”

They laugh, and Ben holds out his glass for more. “So,” John says. “Was it…well, how was it?”

“It was good on a technical level. Like a performance given by a virtuoso who happens to be an android. No passion. Nothing other people had.”

“Awkward?”

“Immensely. I kept my mind elsewhere, as much as I could.”

“Were they nice about it, at least?”

The sadness in John’s eyes makes Ben ache. If he ever needed confirmation that he was missing something wonderful, there it is. He could gnaw on his hands now, they itch so badly. “Yes. They were all very professional. It wasn’t their fault I felt the way I did.”

“You couldn’t talk to them about it? So it wouldn’t be as weird?”

“I never tried. I was out of my element. It was always some big, cold city, far from home, always strangers I’d never see again once they’d left the room. A lot of people would find that liberating, I suppose. It was the opposite for me. I could barely tell them what I wanted, and some seemed surprised at how little I asked of them. Sometimes they’d notice how nervous and shy I seemed, or how sad, and they’d ask questions. I’d lie and evade. Anything beyond that seemed impossible. I could only do what I’d come to do. Scratch an itch. Once or twice a year at most, no matter how much I wanted it in the meantime.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“But you needed it, like anybody else.”

“Yes. I just couldn’t go through all that very often. And I didn’t like having needs.”

“Why not?”

He smirks. “It was bad for my image.”

John laughs a little, then watches him for a moment. “Why not?” he says again, but his eyes are so knowing that Ben feels sure John could answer the question himself. 

“Because,” he begins, and falters. 

“It’s okay,” John says, barely above a whisper. Being drawn out this way is almost a physical sensation. John is pulling at him, firmly and insistently, but gently, too. Mercifully. Ben surrenders.

“Because I didn’t much like being a person, much of the time. I wasn’t very good at it. While I had my power, I wouldn’t have minded having nothing else. Just the role, none of the human hardships that came with it. None of the hiding. Then I’d never have to be alone with myself, and know that no matter how devoted I was to this place, no matter how much it gave me and made of me, it couldn’t be everything. There were needs it simply couldn’t satisfy. It couldn’t love me like another person could have.”

John’s lip quivers a bit before he takes another sip. “When did you know that?”

“After the new people came, and things were peaceful. When I was older…When did you?”

“It took a while.” He stares down at his hand, scratches his index finger with his thumb. “You could have found somebody else.”

“No,” Ben says softly. “I really couldn’t. Knowing all that didn’t change anything. I was still here, and there was still only one for me.”

The quivering is much stronger now. John chugs his drink, leans his head on his hand, but doesn’t change the subject entirely.

“You say you kept your mind elsewhere.”

“I tried. Sometimes it worked, particularly if I could focus on a memory. A person other than the one in the room with me. Sometimes I only ended up dwelling on my own peculiarities.”

“Which were?”

“Well…” Ben chuckles. “They’re peculiar.”

“I can take it.”

He has to look away from the heat in John’s eyes. His head feels much heavier now, so he leans it back on the sofa. “I froze,” he says. “Every time, when they started to touch me. Couldn’t move, couldn’t respond. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it. My body didn’t know how to react right away. The rest of the time, I was either being hit or not being touched at all, so it was a major adjustment. They’d start to pull away and ask questions, when all I needed was for them to stay where they were. Their arms around me. And too often, I was afraid of saying too much, inadvertently. Telling secrets. Which was highly inconvenient, because I’d go stone deaf at the end and have no idea what I might have said. Every time. Even…even when I’m alone.”

John is silent, but Ben doesn’t trust himself to even glance at him. It’s enough to feel John’s stare, seeming to cover every inch of Ben’s body at once. “I told you they were peculiar,” Ben says.

“Not so much. What do you think causes that, the deafness?”

“I looked it up once, something to do with blood pressure. But I don’t know. It was the only time I could get my mind to slow down. I was always thinking. Too much, like you said. I needed just one moment’s silence, some semblance of peace. Never complete, but enough to keep me going.” 

“Were they all…were they women, or men, or…”

“Yes, both. Women more often.”

“Did you not like the men as much?”

“No, I liked them a great deal. They were different, in ways I enjoyed. Their enthusiasm certainly wasn’t real, but the physical reactions…well, they couldn’t fake those like the women did. But with a lot of them, it was more…perfunctory. More than usual, even. The men would do it and be done with it, get up and leave in a hurry. The women were more likely to stay for a bit afterward. To spend a few minutes holding me before they left. They were better at creating the illusion of intimacy. They didn’t all do it, but it was something I couldn’t ask for, so I had to rely on probability.”

“You couldn’t ask for much.”

“No. Nothing unusual, beyond a lengthy period of kissing. I enjoyed it very much.”

“Me, too.” 

Ben grins, somehow managing to avoid saying how glad he is to hear that, how much he looks forward to indulging them both someday. Let John imagine it, and long for it, and make it happen when the time is right for him. Let him drive Ben out of his mind with questions and confessions that only deepen the desire, until then.

“I never did anything with a man,” John says.

He tries to imagine what it would be like to be anyone’s first anything. He wouldn’t have begrudged John any kind of experience imaginable, but the lack of it, and the possible opportunity to teach him a few things, holds a certain fascination. It seems oddly exotic, like the idea of having sex right here at home, in his own bed. “Didn’t you?”

He shakes his head. “Thought about it. Obviously.”

“Was it only me, or were there others?”

“A few, from time to time. I never put much thought into making it happen, but it was there.” He presses his lips together, an old darkness in his eyes. “Thought about Boone, once or twice.”

“You spent a lot of time together, early on.”

“Yeah. He was the only one willing to get out there and try to figure this place out with me. Everybody else was busy trying to get back to whatever misery they came out of. He was better and brighter than that.” He smiles a little. “But way too pretty. And too young.”

“The men I hired were like that, without fail. It was rather dull.”

“Really? You couldn’t ask for any kind of guy you wanted?”

“The most they ever offered me was a choice of hair color. Which, you understand, wasn’t the least bit helpful when I wanted it to be you.” 

John grins. “No, you’d be shit out of luck there…Did you pretend it was me a lot?”

“As much as I could, but I never quite believed it. I could keep my eyes closed the whole time, but then there’d be the noises. Not your voice, not you. And I didn’t know you that way. It was hard to imagine, but I never stopped trying.”

John says nothing, and Ben spends some time staring at the walls and ceiling, placidly noting how unstable the corners seem, moving back and forth. It’s much better than a spinning room. He wonders what his life would have been like if he could have gone through it this calmly, perfectly content to spill his secrets, but can’t imagine being able to do it without John. 

“What was it like?” John says. “I mean, I guess I know some of it, I did that with women, but…” He laughs. “We never went out and bought a dildo or anything. So I don’t know what it’s like, to be on that end of it.”

“Neither do I. I never requested it.”

“You didn’t want to?” 

“No, I did. But it, uh…” he laughs at himself a little. “It seemed like too much to ask. Too close.”

“Too…but, you were close when you were doing it to them.”

“I know.”

John’s brows knit. “It made sense at the time,” Ben says, and they both collapse into laughter. After a moment, Ben finds that he can explain it a little, through the growing lump in his throat, despite never having articulated it to himself before.

“I think maybe I had the idea that I could pretend they were someone else, but they couldn’t do the same with me. That there was something about me that was too much for people, and that was why they never stayed. Or why they managed to reject me without leaving at all. There was something wrong and repulsive in me that no one wanted to touch. It was never a question of the hired hands staying, but they were more of the same, there and then gone. If I could minimize our contact, I wouldn’t have to feel that as much. They didn’t want the portion of my body they were already getting, so I had no business asking them to take more of it. So I wanted things I wouldn’t ask for, and I overpaid, and then I paid more. I spared them.”

“It’s not true,” John says softly, his eyes shining. “They just couldn’t see you. You couldn’t see yourself. I can.”

Ben takes an unsteady breath as the lump swells to enormous proportions, then slowly subsides. Someday he’ll see what John sees, maybe a few eons from now. All he can do at the moment is change the subject. “What about you? You know my history now. What about yours?”

“You know all that already.”

He shakes his head. “We knew about Helen, and the one you called Helen on the phone. No one else showed up for us.”

“Because there wasn’t much else. She was the only one who stuck around. Nobody else lasted six months. Never lived with anybody but Helen. Picked up most of them in bars, and didn’t see much of them afterwards.”

“You didn’t use…pickup lines, did you?” John only laughs. “Oh God,” Ben says. “You did.”

“I had a few, as a young man. You have to have something, when you don’t have a whole lot to crow about and you know it. A few too many drinks and a lot of false bravado will do it, and sometimes it’s better to get rejected for saying something stupid than to be ignored completely. Invisible. Even getting punched in the face by one of their boyfriends or dates felt better than that. It’s lonely out there. It’s hard to find anybody who’ll put up with you, let alone understand you. I gave up on that, on and off. Settled for some distraction in the off times. You know.”

Ben nods, and for a moment, there’s nothing but that understanding, no kind of distance between them at all. Then there’s John’s impish grin again. “You wanna hear a line?”

“I’m _desperate_ to hear one.”

“Okay. The bad ones are the best.” He gives Ben an over-the-top leer, but it’s still a little enticing at this point. “Do you want to see something swell?”

Ben gapes at him for a second, then laughs. “That’s hideous.”

“She made that same face. Then she threw her drink at me.”

“As well she should. Tell me another.”

“Should I call you in the morning, or just roll over and nudge you? That’s a classic.”

“Please tell me that didn’t work.”

“It did once. She was in a really goofy mood.”

“One more.”

“Okay, this is the worst one, by far. Only used it once. Did you clean your pants with Windex? I can practically see myself in them. Not so classic.”

Ben covers his face and laughs through his hands. “That doesn’t even make sense. There’s no way that worked.”

“Wrong again. She was so drunk. I thought I was keeping up with her, but nope. Way too drunk, as I found out when she started puking in the cab on the way back to her place.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t leave her like that. Ended up sitting on her bathroom floor with her all night. Holding her hair for her half the time.”

“That was good of you.”

He shrugs and smiles. “Didn’t feel good. I just wanted to go home and be miserable on my own, not hear about her lousy ex-boyfriend. Talked her out of calling him, though. She was okay when I left. I hope she stayed that way.”

“It was still good of you. Because that’s the way you are.”

He looks down, flushing a bit. Ben smiles to himself, takes one more sip and makes a face.

“This tastes like paint thinner,” he says. John laughs at him, and Ben sets his glass down. “I didn’t plan this,” he continues. “Didn’t think about it like I did the books. I would have thought about a decent brand.”

“You can still taste it?” John says, and they laugh together. “It does the job, at least.” 

“I suppose. I wonder if that’s why my father never really branched out into hard liquor, but Dharma beer isn’t much better. Certainly not worth giving up a child for.”

He thinks about it a little too long, and an awful sadness threatens to settle, overshadowing everything else. John sees it, and pushes it away.

“This has been easier than I thought it would be,” he says.

Ben smiles. “For me, too.”

John smiles back. The sofa seems softer than ever, and Ben is so at ease that he almost falls asleep, still watching John, waiting for another question to answer and another laugh to share. John sets his glass down and rubs his face. 

“We should call it a night,” he says.

“I suppose so,” Ben answers, knowing well enough that he’s fading, but still a little disappointed that this night has to end. 

“Can you get up?”

“Sure.”

Ben stands and finds that his knees don’t quite work. He falls back onto the sofa. “Or not,” he says, and laughs with John. He still can’t get used to that sound, almost hopes not to. Let it stay like this, a strange little miracle. John gets up slowly and carefully, more coordinated than Ben but still bracing himself on the sofa’s arm.

“Okay,” he says, “I think I can help you down the hall and get myself outside.”

An image of him shambling through the jungle in this state makes Ben snort, but the thought of him leaving at all hurts. “Don’t be silly. You can use Alex’s room.”

John’s eyes are soft with sympathy. Ben has to look away. The sadness will come back if he doesn’t, much stronger now. “You sure? I can find my way out still.”

“It’d be nice to know someone was there. I always missed that. But only if it’s all right with you.”

“It’s fine. Put your arm around my neck.”

He won’t deflect and dissociate now, the way he did when John first suggested this, helping him out of bed instead of into it, such a long time ago. This time, he’ll let himself feel everything. He raises his arm. His hand moves over John’s shoulder and the collar of his shirt to the nape of his neck, all warmth and sinew. Goosebumps rise under his fingers. He can smell the fresh water from the falls in John’s clothes. John’s hand closes over his at the heel and brings it down to the other shoulder. Ben squeezes, sharp collarbone pressing into his palm as he’s hoisted up. John wraps his arm around Ben’s waist, his fingers splayed out, his hand a shock of warmth that seems to radiate all the way through his body. There’s a sharp but tiny intake of breath. He can’t be sure whose it is, can’t fix on a single thought as he’s led down his regrettably short hallway. There’s only the proximity of John’s body, the collision of hips and thighs, the sparks under his skin.

John deposits him on the bed quickly, but gently. Ben remembers this. It was the only thing that got through to him the first time, puncturing his baffled denial that John had made him feel anything back at the Swan. This is the gentleness that comes from great strength, from the knowledge of his body’s power and the wisdom not to use it cruelly or thoughtlessly. He’s learned he can’t hurt Ben here, but he still takes care not to, and Ben is in awe once again. John walks over to the doorway and grips the side of it hard, like he’s not just holding himself up, but holding himself back. Ben wants to beg him to let go, to come and be close to him, if nothing else. 

“That was fun,” is all Ben can say.

“Yeah.”

He lingers there, watching. Ben begins to freeze, and feels what might have been a massive surge of blood to the lower half of his body, if he were sober. As it is, it’s nothing more than a lazy ripple. Arousal has no hope of beating out alcohol, but by God, it tries. John might well be experiencing the same thing.

“Goodnight,” he says, and walks away very quickly.

“Goodnight,” Ben calls after him. It’s quiet for a minute, then there’s a series of thumps that might be a stumble and recovery, followed by Alex’s light clicking on and off. Ben turns off his light and falls heavily onto his pillow. He’s already gotten so much more than he deserves, but there might be more still. He closes his eyes and smiles in the dark. 

 

There’s an arm over Ben’s middle and a body pressed to his own, its legs tucked behind his and its pelvis firm against his backside. He has a vague impression of light in the room and thanks his subconscious for coming up with such a pleasant waking dream. He pushes back toward the phantom body, wanting to be even closer. It reciprocates and makes an appreciative sound. John’s voice. Ben sighs happily. Over the gaping collar of last night’s half-unbuttoned shirt, he can feel John’s breath on his neck. It still smells a bit like whiskey. There’s a slight, flat weight laying across Ben’s hip. The knife on John’s belt, probably. This is an awfully realistic dream. Ben opens his eyes.

John is here in bed with him. His body is warm and heavy with sleep, and so close. Ben’s heart begins to pound. He wonders how John got into this bed without waking him, as small as it is. And as drunk as John was, stumbling in the hall. Maybe he just dove in, and Ben was too far gone himself to notice. He wonders what else he might have missed, and tries desperately to remember anything beyond going to bed. There’s nothing but a clear recollection of falling asleep happy. If John came in here with something other than this in mind, surely he would have woken Ben, instead of just getting into bed. Unless he’s in no particular hurry. They have all the time in the world, after all. 

It’s too much to hope for, after a single good night and no talk of forgiveness. John probably thought he was dreaming, too, or walked in his sleep. If he’d been ready to share a bed, he probably would have said so last night. Ben’s heart slows, and he tries not to expect anything at all. But John is still here. Ben hopes he won’t be upset when he wakes. Maybe he should try to put some space between them, or wake John right away. Maybe it’s wrong to stay where he is, savoring the warmth and closeness, the solid weight of John's long, muscular arm draped around him, the press of John’s soft belly against his back. It’s so like he imagined, this hard and soft body. He’s never been held so long, so closely. Every second makes him want a million more. Maybe that’s why he didn’t wake up when John came in and lay down beside him. A need was being filled, and his sleeping body didn’t care how. It only fed on what it was finally being given. There was nothing in it to jolt his mind back to consciousness. They’re here together, safe and calm, as they were always meant to be. His peace is still nowhere near complete, but it’s richer and deeper than it’s ever been before. John doesn’t have to go, at least not yet. Ben is almost asleep again when John stirs, then goes completely still. 

“Ben?” he says softly, after a long pause.

He briefly considers pretending to be asleep, not liking that stillness. “Yes?” He hears John swallow.

“When did I come in here?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been awake a few minutes.”

“Thought I dreamed it.”

“I wondered if you had.”

John swallows again, and Ben hears the soft, wet sounds his tongue makes against his lips as he licks them. Ben’s eyes drift closed, and he's instantly hard, straining against the fabric of his pants. John’s breath seems hotter on his skin now, closer. If he moves forward just a little, his lips will be on the nape of Ben’s neck. It’s all up to him. He could pull Ben down onto his back, slide on top of him, kiss and touch and grind until they can’t feel anything else and can’t stop themselves. Until they’re out of their minds, free of memory and pain. He can feel something else pressing against him now, and John immediately disengages and gets up.

“I’ve got to get going,” he says, sounding a little nervous, but otherwise unperturbed. “I, uh…” 

Ben smiles, practically able to hear him trying to come up with some urgent matter to attend to, some graceful exit, and lets him off the hook. “All right, then.”

“I’ll see you later.”

“I hope so.”

John lingers for a second, then rushes out of the room and out the front door. The shower is calling to Ben, and he knows he’ll have a much better time of it with all this new ammunition, but he doesn’t get up yet. For the moment, it’s enough to feel John’s warmth fade from his body and the bed, and to know he was here. Not for the last time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he prepares to pursue whatever is now possible with John, Ben recalls his long-postponed visit to Richard, when they addressed both their shared past and what could have been. Ben invites John over for dinner and a conversation about how to proceed. John tells Ben about his time alone on the Island before Ben's arrival. 
> 
> This chapter contains a non-explicit but potentially disturbing memory of non-con fantasies. This is the only non-con element in the story. Also contains very brief, implied Richard/Jacob.
> 
> From my original LiveJournal posts, the songs for this chapter are "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac, and "Olsen Olsen" and "Gong" by Sigur Rós.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not using the canon afterlife scenes or concepts at all. This conclusion to my Summerland Trilogy will have a happy ending that's 100% real. The other characters listed appear only in conversation or flashbacks.

For the next few days, Ben replays his night and morning with John over and over in his mind, in the shower and out. Sometimes he’s amazed at himself, having said so much, so freely. Sometimes it seems like a matter of course, after having wanted it and dreamt about it for so long. He only wishes he knew what to do next. Sitting here with his books and waiting for something to happen might have seemed like a reasonable plan a while back, but he can’t possibly do that now. He wants too much, too strongly, but he can’t push for all that at once, either. He wishes his only experience with romantic pursuits hadn’t been so grim and hopeless, directed at a woman who hated him. 

It seemed so easy for other people, especially in the Dharma days, with their pretensions of enlightenment and their moronic self-assurance. As time dragged on, he found himself in the strange position of envying people he already knew to be doomed. He cleaned up after them, always unfailingly polite, even as they looked down their noses at him and his father. He watched them as he worked against them, with loathing, with desire, with a painful awareness of his own isolated, untouched state. He’s still surprised he made it to twenty-nine and his first hired hand without spontaneously combusting.

It seems possible that waking up together might have been more off-putting for John than it seemed. Possible, but somehow unlikely. Maybe he’s out there waiting for Ben, wanting to be pursued this time. It’s a wonderful feeling, after all. Ben hesitates, and tries to wait a bit longer, and dawdles while collecting some water and such for the trip. He can hear Hugo in his head, gently chiding him for his indecision about going to see Richard. Indecision that lasted more than twelve years.

“Dude,” Hugo said, “what are you waiting for? Weren’t you guys friends?”

“So he said.”

“What’s that mean?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, at a loss. Hugo watched him, as patiently as ever, and as baffled. For him, friendship was a simple thing, freely offered and accepted. He could watch over the Island a thousand years without knowing the tenuous bonds and casual betrayals of Ben’s people. He was blessed.

“It was more complicated than that,” Ben said. “I’m not sure why he said it. He served Eloise and Charles, and then he served me. He was kind to me, by our definition of kindness, which wasn’t much more than basic civility. We spent thirty years talking business and little else. I don’t think I ever really knew him at all. But he was always here, and then, one day, he was gone. It’s strange.”

“So, go talk to him now. Ask him why he said that. Ask him whatever. You have his job now, man, you’d have stuff to talk about.”

“If he’d had anything to say to me, he could have said it then.”

“Like, while the Island was falling apart?”

Ben sighed and smiled for a second, before he remembered himself after Ilana, after Sun had abandoned the tarp he’d volunteered to help her with. Drained by tears and terror, a fragile little man no one seemed to see in the happy commotion. “He didn’t say anything when the rest of you were having your reunion on the beach. We were the odd men out. He could have come to me. Like a friend might.”

“You wanted him to.”

“I don’t know. It was…one of a lot of things that went unresolved.”

“But you can resolve it if you want to. Otherwise you’ll just keep thinking about it and not feeling right.”

Hugo was much better at that sort of thing than Harper. Even if Ben hadn’t been so enamored of his secrets in those days, it was hard to imagine telling her much of anything. The most mundane conversation with her felt like being dropped unarmed into the company of a hostile alien. The rest of them would have laughed. There was a living human being too intense for Benjamin Linus. “I suppose.”

“We could use some more books for the library anyway.”

“Now you’re using my weaknesses against me. That’s what I would have done before, so I have to advise you—”

Hugo laughed. “You’re totally going. Pack your stuff, dude. It’ll be fine.”

Days later, Ben found himself ringing the doorbell of a large suburban house in midwestern America. A woman answered, a stunning brunette in her thirties. Ben knew Richard had married a few years after he left the Island, but not much else. He tried to read her face before he spoke, looking for some sign that she knew anything of her husband’s former life, that she had any inkling of who Ben might be. There was no hardness in her hazel eyes, no recognition, nothing to suggest she might have been at home among their people. He saw instead a tremendous openness to her face, as if any lie she attempted to tell would show in a dozen different ways before she finished saying it. Richard hadn’t been homesick, at least not enough to seek out someone familiar. Ben asked for him, under the assumed name, just as Richard appeared behind her. 

They would have been roughly the same age by then, if Richard’s time as an immortal didn’t count, but Ben was inwardly amused to see that Richard still managed to look younger. He’d only aged by small degrees, gray at the temples and a bit further up, fine lines around his eyes and mouth, glasses not just for building his ships in bottles anymore. He’d grown comfortable there, with a little thickness around the middle and a slackness through the shoulders, clothes as plain and beige as his present surroundings. Still the same face, save for the absence of that controlled menace from his eyes, probably still turning heads wherever he went. Ben remembered a few of the new converts making a play for him, long after the old-timers had given up. All of them ignored, or only given a night or two once in a great while, nothing more. He lived some version of Ben’s mainland life in that regard, but Ben couldn’t empathize very strongly. Richard never had to pay for anyone’s company. At the time, Ben took it for their people’s customary coldness, or dedication to the work above all else. He didn’t have the whole story. He didn’t know about the loss of Isabella, more than a century old but still sharp enough to cut. 

Richard camouflaged his shock as expertly as ever and improvised an explanation for Ben’s presence, calling him an old friend. Ben didn’t listen beyond the first few words, seized by the strangest sense of nostalgia. He didn’t consciously miss the old days, but they still pulled at him then, through the sound of an artful lie. This was his life once. This was home. The difference then was Richard’s protective hand on his wife’s heavily pregnant belly. He cared about what he was saying this time. He loved her and wouldn’t lie to her if he didn’t have to, for real reasons, not for Jacob’s or Ben’s whims. She smiled at them and headed off toward the den. Ben counted three young children there, chattering and laughing as they played a board game together, like something out of a commercial. Richard ushered him toward a study stuffed with books and presumably false diplomas, and closed the door. Ben opened his mouth to explain himself, but didn’t get far.

“I’m not coming back,” Richard said quickly, more fear than defiance in his eyes. Ben had heard tell of Richard’s panic in those chaotic last days, had seen a little of it himself, but still barely believed it could have happened. He was the most unflappable of them all. “There’s nothing you can say or do to change my mind. I don’t care what kind of crisis is happening there this time, do you understand? I _don’t care_.” 

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“That’s what you say now. You’re going to say something else in a minute, and you think it’ll get me back. You have it all ready, you’re just trying to make me think it’s my choice. I know how you operate.”

Ben almost smiled, that misplaced nostalgia tickling him by then. “Richard, I don’t do that anymore.”

Richard laughed, a little unhinged. “Give me one reason to believe you.”

Ben shrugged. “There wouldn’t be much for you to do there, I’m afraid. I’ve taken over your job.”

“Working for who?”

Ben tried to imagine being that far out of the loop, found he couldn’t. Richard had had so much time to tire of it all. His exile was a welcome one. “Hugo,” Ben said.

Richard stared at him blankly, then laughed again, disarmed for a second. “Well. That must be different.”

“It’s much noisier, but not the way it used to be. It’s peaceful. It’s a good life.”

He bristled. “I already have a good life.”

“I can see that you do. I haven’t come to interfere. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I only came to talk to you, just for a moment.”

He folded his arms. “You can’t talk to whoever’s still around there?”

“It killed them all. There are others now. You and I are all that’s left of our people.”

“And that’s too many,” he snapped. “We were all asking for it.”

He felt himself flinch, very slightly. After so long with Hugo, harsh words felt like a slap. He hadn’t thought to hide his reaction, and saw the tiniest flash of surprise in Richard’s eyes. 

“What do you want to talk about, Ben?” Richard said, his voice a little softer.

“It all ended so abruptly,” he ventured, unsure of how to begin.

“It had to end. It was broken beyond repair.”

“It’s all right now.”

“I really doubt that, Ben. You should have gotten away while you had the chance.”

“I’ve had more chances than that. It’s home for me. And what we’re doing there is still important.”

Richard scoffed. “Still taking care of that light, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Ever see it do anything?”

“Not up close.” 

He shook his head and stared off into space for a moment. “He was so tied to it. Jacob.”

Ben braved the reflexive guilt that always came with hearing that name, the awful pictures of that night in the statue and on the beach, the old feeling of being irretrievably lost. “Someone had to be. Has to be, always.”

“Well, it’s no kind of life at all. Especially not for two thousand years.”

“Hugo’s all right with it so far.”

“Is he?”

“He lives with us in the barracks. I think that helps. He doesn’t hide himself away.” 

“Yeah, neither did you and all the other leaders. All the more reason to keep an eye on him.”

“He’s incorruptible.”

Richard smirked. “Really?”

“I know my opposite when I see it.”

“I hope you’re right. Your job will be a lot easier that way.”

“I’m sorry I made things difficult for you.”

Richard’s brows knitted. “Are you dying or something? Doing the twelve steps? What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing. I owed you an apology.”

“You don’t apologize.”

“I do a lot of things now that I never used to do. And vice versa. You saw where all my brilliant ideas got me.”

Richard watched him for a while, with trepidation, but with a hopeless little longing, too. Wanting to believe, despite himself, despite everything. “Come on,” he said, the slightest quaver in his voice. “Just make your pitch and get out of here.” What Ben heard behind the words was more like a plea than a dismissal. _Tell me something good came of it. Tell me it wasn’t all for nothing._

“I was never meant to lead. I made you do some things you knew were wrong, so I could gain more power for myself. I’m sorry.”

“You still think anything we did was _right_?”

“No, not really. But it was bigger than any of us, and it fell harder than we could have imagined. We’ve built something better in its place. We’re not hurting anyone anymore. We’re not hurting ourselves.”

Richard moved toward the sliding glass door, looking out into the backyard for a time. Ben felt him relenting, and a shuttered old part of Ben’s brain lit up, telling him that this was the moment he’d been working toward. He had Richard now, vulnerable and malleable. Whatever Ben wanted, he’d get, with the right set of temptations and lies. He could get the man back to the Island now, if he set his mind to it, if that was what he really wanted. But it wasn’t. He had nothing to sell, no ill intent. He wasn’t lying. He pushed the thoughts aside, wondering how long he had to starve that instinct before it would finally die. Ben kept quiet, letting Richard speak instead. 

“Come here,” he said, a hint of proud affection in his voice. “Look out there. That’s my eldest son.”

Ben saw a boy outside, tossing a ball to a golden retriever, both of them looking as happy as the rest of the family in the den. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing there, and almost wanted to laugh at the picture-postcard life Richard had set up for himself. That much sustained wholesomeness would drive Ben up the nearest wall. “I see,” he said.

“He reminds me a lot of a boy I once knew. He’s very quiet, very smart. Witty in the oddest way. I used to dream sometimes that he really was you. You were tired of waiting for me to come back, so you went to Mittelos and had them sneak you through my cells. You’d have such a convincing argument for me, once you learned to talk again.”

Ben grinned. “It’s good to know I’m such a master of disguise. I did love my costumes.”

“But he’s not you. He’s just a kid, like you were. His own person. He had a birthday last week. That’s how old you were when I met you. Can you believe that?” 

He looked more closely at the boy. Gawky, with spindly limbs. His face a delicate-featured copy of his mother’s, except for the eyes, dark and framed by those ridiculous lashes. No pain in those eyes, no grief. Untroubled and untainted, the way Ben might have been if things had been different. He imagined his own eyes there, at that age, and tried to see a soldier, a leader, someone with the full weight of destiny on his shoulders. There was only a boy. Ben wished him fatelessness, like he did with all the children. No purpose he didn’t choose for himself, no unseen forces aligning against him, no holes in his heart. 

“It was only natural for you to believe it,” he said to Richard. “It’s what we all believed. We were told to wait for our messiah, and we did. When he wasn’t the one, we discarded him.” 

“We believed a lot of bullshit. I was a grown man. For God’s sake, I was old enough to be your…I don’t know how many greats, let’s just say grandfather. I should have had some wisdom by then.”

Ben shook his head wearily. “But, what would you have done? What could you do, really?”

“I could have taken your father out and beaten him into submission.”

Ben smiled a little. “That would have been very kind of you, but I’m afraid the damage had already been done.”

“Not all of it. You weren’t one of us yet. I did that to you.”

“It’s not as though you had time to think it over. You saved a child from dying. Any decent man would, regardless of the means.”

“I should have gotten you out of there, to the mainland. That was no place for a child to grow up. Inviting you into our death cult was hardly the same as saving you.”

His heart ached for Alex. “You didn’t know.”

“I should have. I saw your potential and never tried to curb it. Because it was something we could use.”

“You’re not responsible for my actions.” 

“What you did, I did. I was your accomplice, not some innocent bystander.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Richard.”

“I want you to blame me. Because it’s not just what you did, it’s what was done to you because you were one of us. I set you up for a life of great pain. You and so many others, and they’re not around to hold me accountable. I led people to their doom, over and over, and I had no right. Jacob gave his orders, but I chose to follow them. It’s all on me.”

Ben could only stare, until Richard seemed to squirm under it, and moved away from the glass. Ben followed. “How long have you felt this way?” he said.

“Not so long. Ten years or so. Not all the time, but when the reminders come…It builds up on you, once your whole glorious purpose goes down the toilet.”

Ben grasped for something reassuring to say, but knew all too well what Richard meant. “Yes. It does.”

“Then, say something,” Richard pleaded. “You were always our best talker. Talk me out of it.”

“Richard…You don’t have to carry all that weight. We all made our choices. Even if it were all true, if everything was as you see it…being alive isn’t one of my regrets. There are people I’d switch places with, if it would change anything, but that’s not possible. I can only be grateful to you. I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn’t have you suffer for me. I’m all right. What I have now is enough.”

Richard didn’t look particularly convinced by the last of it, but relieved, at least. For the moment. Ben supposed he hadn’t quite convinced himself, either, but he’d done what he could. He thought of the old days, when he would only hear as much as he wanted to hear from Richard, then block any further commentary with silence. Or baffle him with whatever maniacal pronouncement came to mind, about breaking Jack in a matter of days, or kidnapping the women of Flight 815 en masse, or the ill-conceived plan to impersonate Henry Gale. _Give me a single plausible scenario in which they’ll even_ try _to substantiate my claims_. _They’re buffoons._ He finally asked the question he’d been turning over in his mind since the cataclysm. 

“That night, the night I did it…You said you were my friend. I always wondered why. You were kind to me, but…I don’t understand.”

“You were always there, weren’t you? You were a part of my life, such as it was. Not for long, in the great scheme of things, but…at a strange time. You were the closest thing I had to a friend. Who else lasted long enough for that? Charles? At least you had a soul.”

“It was that simple?” he said, dumbfounded.

“What were you expecting?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Richard chuckled. “Only you would overthink something like that.”

“Perhaps. You haven’t missed me, I’m sure.”

“In a way. Sometimes I wake up thinking, what’s he done now? How much silence will it earn from Jacob?”

“I’m glad I wasn’t privy to that.” There was something he didn’t want to ask, but he couldn’t walk out of there without knowing. He forced the words out. “I didn’t know him. You did. There must have been something I didn’t see, that made you follow him for so long. What was it? What was he like?”

Richard gave a little smile, haunted eyes fixed on some point far away. “Strange. Like he wasn’t only out of his own time, but his own space. Kind and empathetic, but only to one person at a time. Get a fair number of them together, and he didn’t care. He believed he did, he told himself it was all for the greater good, but when each group came to a bad end through whatever variety of manipulations, he didn’t feel it any more than the monster did. It was only part of the plan. I believed because he did, because we were both damned, but he seemed to know what to do when I didn’t. I thought I could make things better for him, by serving, by being there with him. We tried to be a comfort to each other, but…when you both still belong to someone else, there isn’t much you can do. All he had was the work, and his grief for his brother. Sometimes I wished him gone. At peace.”

A glance from him was enough to make Ben stare hard at the floor. “I was misled,” he offered, “and I was wrong.” 

“I wasn’t angry with you for very long. I wished it hadn’t happened violently, but I’m not sure that could have been avoided, with the effect he had on people. Or that he minded, really. The day we met, he held me underwater until I understood that I was alive, and wanted to be. He still had something in him then, some of the man he must have been before he took up his cause. Over time, it was harder and harder to look at him and believe it had really happened. There was less of him every year, until he was nothing but a vessel for that power he believed in. For the Island. One slab of rock on top of another. If I’d stayed much longer…” 

“I understand.”

“What was John like? The real John. You saw more of him than I did.”

He’d imagined Richard asking that in return, and prepared a reply hours in advance. That made it a little easier. Just a little. “Think of everything the false one was and reverse it. That was John.”

“That good?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He saw the question in Richard’s eyes and felt a second’s nauseating, guilty panic. _Please don’t ask why. Please_. Richard knew the expendability of their leaders better than anyone. A word from him could have put a dent in Ben’s plans for John. If Ben would have listened, if he could have seen beyond himself, if he could or would have told either of them any portion of the truth. An awful lot of ifs that didn’t amount to much. Richard’s curiosity seemed to wane soon enough, and changing the subject felt better than the hour he’d paid for the night before.

“There’s one more thing I want to ask you. I swear it’s nothing to do with coming back.” 

“Ask.”

“That day on the beach, when the rest of them were having their reunions, just before the end…We stood apart, and you didn’t come to me. Why?”

One corner of Richard’s mouth twitched. “Are you saying you want a hug, Ben?”

“No,” Ben answered, too quickly. Richard took a deep breath before speaking again. 

“I’d just come from trying to kill myself. There was no way out and nothing I could do, but it still wouldn’t let me die. I wasn’t equipped to comfort anyone. What about you?”

“I’d just come from nearly being killed. Which was nothing new, but I also told someone the truth about myself. The things I’d done for power, when it wasn’t what really mattered at all. I could have used a friend. And so could you.”

Richard didn’t answer. Ben tried to think of some parting words, tried to fight the hollow feeling in his chest. “So, you’re teaching at the university now. History.”

“I know a little about it.”

“Right.”

Richard studied his face, lingering around the lines. “He’s letting you get older.”

“Not by choice. He offered, I refused. It’s too dangerous for me.”

Richard nodded. “It changes things. It’s the perfect excuse to keep your distance. You don’t have to be much of a person. You can just _be_. But you need something for yourself. It can’t all be about the Island.”

“I’ll think about that. I’m happy for you, truly. I’m glad you have what you wanted.”

“I do. Thank you.”

There was another long silence, and Ben knew it was time to go. “Well,” he said, turning toward the door, “I can see myself out, if you like.”

“Ben.”

He turned back around to find Richard right in front of him, and had one more second of that strange longing for the world he’d helped destroy. Richard still knew how to move silently, like they did in the jungle. He looked down to confirm that Richard’s feet were bare, then found himself wrapped in Richard’s arms. His body blundered through its usual confusion at being embraced, freezing solid. 

“I would have been a father to you,” Richard said softly, “if I could have. A good one. Someone should have been.”

He’d never looked at Richard that way, never considered another surrogate father after they’d filled his head with dreams of Jacob. Richard could only have been an improvement. Ben tried to see a miniature version of himself in that big house with Richard and his family, but couldn’t make himself fit. He could only see them on the Island, with Roger Linus put to death and Richard taking his place. They had a home, not a cage. There were no more rages, no more beatings, no terror to escape from and no bullet in the heart for his trouble. They were calm and quiet, talking about books, building ships, keeping each other present in the world outside themselves. They were loved, if only by each other. The monster was still out there, but Richard helped him fight it. He didn’t fling the door open for it at every opportunity. Ben grew up, still in danger, still damaged in ways that wouldn’t change, but more whole than he ever could have been otherwise. When John fell out of the sky, Ben was ready. He was wide open, mind and heart and body. It was too much. 

“I’m all right,” he said again, through a closing throat, more to himself than to Richard.

Richard laughed a little. “Liar.”

He’d heard the word from so many people, their voices enraged, contemptuous, grimly amused, but never so warm. Never sounding like an endearment. He took it for all it was worth, proof that he’d meant something to someone in the midst of all the trouble he’d caused. Someone he hadn’t killed. He squeezed Richard very hard for a moment, then let him go. Richard walked him outside. 

“Be good,” was the last thing he said, real hope in his eyes then, still laced with unease.

Ben smiled, hoping there was nothing in it that could possibly be construed as cunning, or mockery, or anything else it used to be. “I try.” 

 

Ben finds John near the falls, walking slowly, looking up into the trees as he goes. Ben doesn’t try to be quiet this time, but approaches slowly. Even though he can reasonably expect that John won’t be frightened or angry, it’s all too familiar. He has to change it somehow. He stops and says John’s name, managing to sound more confident than he feels. John turns around quickly and smiles at him. Maybe he had the same idea. 

“Well,” John says. “Thought I’d never see you out here.”

“I thought…I wondered whether it might be my turn to drop by.”

John looks down and grins. “Maybe so.”

Ben allows himself a little moment of happy relief at having gotten something right, but reminds himself that it’s only one thing. There could be thousands of others before anything new happens at all. There’s still the matter of their interesting morning together. Ben eases into it as best he can.

“How are you?”

“Good,” John says, still grinning, like he can’t stop. 

“That’s good. I also wondered…Waking up like that was a little strange, wasn’t it?”

John’s laugh is loud and forceful, like he’s been holding it back. Ben remembers his awkward exit that morning and joins in. “Yeah,” John says, “you could say that.”

“But not overly so?”

John gives him a long look that hits him squarely below the belt. “It was really nice.”

“Yes.” Ben stares until his thoughts threaten to show on the outside, and he remembers how sober he is. He moves his bag very slightly toward his front and tries to clear his head. “I was thinking of cooking tonight,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“I remember how you appreciated my fried chicken.” He expects the question to flow naturally from that, but it doesn’t. He waits for it to come out, nerves jangling, until John breaks the silence.

“Is there something you wanna ask me?”

For a second, he wishes John would fill in the blanks for him, but soon finds himself actually wanting to ask, and wanting it badly. He’s done this part wrong before, completely and utterly. There’s an exhilaration in making this proposal, but it’s still not easy.

“I probably won’t say no,” John says. “If that helps.”

He breathes out something between a sigh and a laugh. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” he says, the words all running together, but all of them said out loud, his intentions clear this time.

John smiles wide. “Yeah. Yeah, I would. What time?”

He hadn’t thought of that, in all his dawdling and contemplating. The relief of having the question out and received happily does nothing for his focus. “Well…”

John glances at his wrist and laughs. “I don’t have a watch. I couldn’t tell you the last time I even looked at a clock.”

“Right. Let’s say sunset, then.”

“Maybe I’ll come early and listen to you bang around the kitchen again.”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “I’m sorry to have offended your delicate ears.”

There’s no small measure of pride in John’s eyes. “It’s my fault, I got you all flustered.”

Ben tries not to smile, but barely succeeds. “You did no such thing. It’s quite impossible to be both efficient and quiet in the kitchen.”

“Uh huh.”

Ben can’t quite tear himself away, and can’t keep looking at John without breaking into a big, stupid smile that John gives right back to him. He imagines his people materializing out of the jungle to gawk at them, time swinging backwards to a day when they were all alive and he was subject to their whims. He’d be foolish and smitten and human in front of them, with no hope of hiding and no fear of consequences. Let them have their power. He’d have more of this. 

“I’ll be there,” John says.

All Ben can do is nod, and rush back through the jungle to prepare.

 

John doesn’t arrive early. It would be silly to call him late when time isn’t much of a consideration anymore, but the wait is interminable. Ben wanders the house, managing to distract himself a bit with the smell of the chicken, rich batter and spices, just greasy enough to really satisfy. In a moment of pure absentmindedness, he gathers up a few candles for the dining area. He’s about to strike a match when he remembers Juliet’s blank, bored face at that awful dinner so long ago. He’d only been imitating things he’d seen and read but never known firsthand, as if he could fit himself into prefabricated romance without adjustment. He has no idea whether John likes that sort of thing or not, but reminds himself that this isn’t some feeble attempt to seduce a reluctant party. It’s uncharted territory, even more so than the previous visits. It’s only the first one he’s known to expect in advance. He puts the candles away quickly. He doesn’t know what will happen tonight, and suspects John doesn’t, either. There’s no sense in dressing it up or trying to steer it one way or another. John knocks at the door. _Come what may_ , Ben thinks as he moves to answer, but he also thinks _please. Please._

John smiles and thrusts another bag of mangoes into Ben’s arms. “I almost forgot these,” he says.

So, he intends to stay through dessert, at the very least. Ben feels that stupid smile on his face again. “Oh, wonderful,” he says. “Have a seat at the table, and I’ll get the freezer going so it’ll be ready after dinner.”

John sits and watches him work. At first, Ben is certain this will prompt him to make some silly blunder that would have been very painful in their prior existence, but it doesn’t happen. John’s warm interest seems to embolden him. He cuts the mangoes and blends the sorbet without incident, feeling as coolly competent as he used to in his work for the Island, both dark and light. When it’s all set, he offers John a glass of wine.

“You’re just trying to get me loaded again,” John says.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

John gives him a slow, predatory smile, and Ben is reminded so suddenly and viscerally of the monster at the campfire that he almost has to turn away. _Leave me alone,_ he shouts in his head, knowing how pointless it is to admonish his own memories. John sees it, one eyebrow quirking inward.

“You okay?” he says. 

“Yes, I’m fine.” He pours wine for John and himself and brings it to the table, trying not to think about how close that brings them and how easy it would be to reach out and touch, then begins to carry out the food.

“Wow,” John says, rising to help before Ben can urge him back down. “You made a whole picnic.”

They lay out the platters and bowls of fried chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and coleslaw, then sit and fill their plates. “Once I got going,” Ben says, “it was hard to stop. This could have been five courses.”

“It’s like the Fourth of July or something.”

“Yes, it’s a bit festive.”

John flushes a little, knowing it’s his presence here that’s being celebrated. Ben watches him sink his teeth into a chicken leg, watches his eyes drift closed with pleasure. His customary _mmm_ is a little louder this time, a little more throaty, almost a moan. Ben automatically files it away for later, not daring to anticipate hearing the real thing soon. 

“You’re a brilliant man,” John says.

Ben beams. “So, it’s not bad, then?”

“Best I ever had.”

It’s hard to make chewing work when he can’t stop smiling, but he figures it out. Watching John eat, hearing his wordless commentaries at each flavor, is a joy. He’s reminded of cooking for Alex when she was small, listening to her happy chatter as they ate, inwardly overjoyed at being needed and wanted. Here was someone who didn’t reject his every attempt at nurturance, but accepted it eagerly. He still felt a teasing little whisper of it when the good times were over, when there was only hurt and anger at their table, wrapped up in unbearable silence. At least she hadn’t rejected him entirely yet. There’s another layer to it now. He’s taking care of John, who chooses to be here. He’s feeding the body he wants so terribly, sharing a different kind of pleasure with the man who inhabits it. It doesn’t matter that they don’t actually need the food anymore. It’s more fulfilling than it’s ever been.

Dinner and dessert pass in a happy, delicious blur, and they sit sipping wine at the cleared table. John slings one arm over the back of his chair, watching Ben, eyes smoldering. Ben returns his gaze for a while, until he’s certain he’ll burst out of his own skin if he doesn’t do something. Talking went well enough last time, and maybe it’s Ben’s turn to ask a few questions now. 

“What do you do out there?”

John shrugs. “You saw it. I walk around, a lot like I did before. Do a lot of thinking. Listen.”

“To what?” 

“This place. Its voice, its presence. The heart and soul of it. It’s still here, the real thing. Not all tied up in the crap people built around it. All that mess we thought was so important. I wouldn’t know a thing about some light in a cave. I know what I can hear, and feel, and there’s no place here that isn’t sacred. It’s everywhere, it can’t be contained. Every place has something, but here…here, it’s so close. There’s nothing in the way. Nobody can twist it into something else, like before. It just comes up through the earth and down from the sky…” He laughs a little. “It’s weird to put it into words.”

“No, it’s…what does it say to you?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “Nothing out loud. Just letting me know it’s here. It’s an enormous power, but there’s an enormous gentleness to it, too. It’s bigger than me, but that’s a fact, not a threat. We’re here and alive, with no demands on either side. I see inside this divine thing, this beautiful thing, and it sees me that way, too. Even if I can’t always believe that. We’re made of the same stuff.”

Ben watches him, his head on his hand, not quite understanding it all. He’s more than willing to stare and ponder. John lets him, for a while. 

“Don’t you feel it?” John finally says.

“I don’t know. It’s a special place, I’ve always known that. I’ve felt…something. I visited the temple once, several years after I was first brought there. We were never told where it came from, what it was supposed to mean to us, nothing. It wasn’t treated as holy, exactly. Just secret and important for unstated reasons, like all our places and things. I was to be the leader, and I hadn’t been in there while I was conscious, so I had my obligatory visit. And I felt…welcomed. Taken in and not found lacking. There was more to it that I couldn’t quite understand, but I felt it inside. Like it had come in with the water in that pool, through the hole in my chest, bringing this tremendous awe, this adoration. Whether it was for me or from me, I didn’t know. And then we left. I thought about it for a while, wanted to go back, but there was always so much going on. I was too tied up in all the crap we built around this place, as you say. My people, we were the crap, to be honest. And when that part of it was over, there was the real work, the good work. I haven’t thought about that day in years.”

“I think you understand more than you know,” John says. “And there’ll be a lot more than that for you.” 

His eyes bring the memory back for Ben much more strongly than the telling of it, full of a kind of adoration no one else has ever shown him. He knew a child’s version of it for a while, in the days when Alex was still young enough to believe Daddy could do no wrong. He had decades of it from Hugo, baffling in its simplicity. Now he sees what the unchaste kind looks like, but there’s something much deeper, much broader here. He can see the beginnings of the kind of devotion it would take to love someone for all time. 

For a long moment, he can’t speak. The other night, he might have taken a drink or filled his glass again. He’s nowhere near drunk, not even tipsy, and realizes how long it’s been since he’s touched his glass. John’s sits forgotten at his left. He knows the alcohol was only a small help the other night, compared to their mutual desire to share and be together, but they don’t need even that little push anymore. It’s only the two of them now, alone in a way they’ve never been before. He feels the strangest sensation, serenity mixed with a racing heart, and finds he can ask about the roots of it all. 

“When did it start for you? When did you see me this way?”

“I don’t know. It was a gradual thing, I guess.” John smiles wide. “But it really got bad when I had you locked up in your basement.”

Ben grins. “Is that so?”

“It was sleeping on your bed that did it. I could smell you. It was...familiar. Like I knew you a lot better than I should. We were alone in the same way. You looked so buttoned down and civilized, but there was something else in you, something wild. Hungry. Just like me. There was so much nobody else saw, but I did. I wanted to go down there and show you I understood.”

He’s dazed for a moment, imagining. “That would have been something.”

John laughs. “Yeah, I would have had a real fight on my hands then.”

“Probably. Not like now.”

John’s eyes widen a bit, then crinkle. Ben isn’t quite sure where that directness came from, but it didn’t feel much like a slip of the tongue. If his skin burns any hotter, he’ll be sweating profusely. It’s hard to imagine that would entice John, but then, it’s hard to imagine what it is about himself that does so already, at least on the outside. He remembers a scrap of conversation from long ago.

“You don’t think my eyes are horrible, do you?”

His brows knit, and he gives a quizzical half-smile. “Why would I?”

“It’s been said.”

“By who?”

“Charles Widmore.”

John scoffs. “Well, what the hell did he know? I’m sure you weren’t giving him a hard time right then, either.”

Ben chuckles. “That was the only vaguely pleasant part of the encounter.”

“I bet.”

“I broke into his penthouse to make threats. Declare war. The usual nonsense, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” John smiles with him, and stares for a second. “That’s my favorite face, right there. One of them, at least. That smile. There’s nothing on you that I could look at and think was horrible. I like it all. I wouldn’t change a thing.” 

“Nor would I,” Ben says, half-whispering through a dry throat.

John closes his eyes for a second, with a slow breath, taking it in. “Course, I haven’t seen _all_ your faces yet.”

He’s trembling now. Various witty rejoinders and answering invitations come to mind, but flit away quickly. John leans forward, elbows on the table and arms folded. He seems to deliberate briefly, then stretches out one arm toward Ben. The palm faces upward, with the smooth underside of the forearm exposed. An offering, like the bag of mangoes that broke their long silence, or the sturdy shoulders that guided Ben’s drunken body to bed, but much more this time. There’s no dreaming or sleepwalking now, no stumbling and needing a hand, only wanting to touch and be touched. He’s completely overwhelmed, as if he’s twenty-nine again, staring helplessly at the first hired hand, the first naked body he’s ever been in the same room with. He’ll set himself off if he so much as blinks. In a moment, he’ll have to answer when she asks what he wants. He’ll ask to be taught. She’ll come toward him and begin to touch him, to bring his hands up to her body, and he’ll freeze solid. John doesn’t do that. He sits and waits, arm outstretched. Ben doesn’t freeze. He thinks it might be easy, like it was that morning, when he woke to John wrapped around him. There was no solid reason to anticipate further pleasures, and no time to tense up. Only sensation. Everything in him is rushing forward now, driving him toward John. He reaches out to touch John’s hand.

He moves slowly, his fingertips to John’s, pleasantly shocked by the heat that blooms between them. There’s still a little softness in John’s fingertips, not like Ben’s own, but a remnant of the office drone John once was. Moving further down the long, thick fingers, Ben can feel the hunter John became. All toughened, weathered skin, all grace and swiftness. There’s a deep callus in the palm that must have come from years of steering a wheelchair. When he didn’t need that anymore, he had the knives and guns and rough work of his new life to press against it. Ben imagines the delightful friction it could provide, and his heart pounds so hard that John must be able to feel it. Ben finds more of that softness on the outer edges of the fleshy pad below John’s thumb, savors it along with the roughness, pressing a bit, lingering. As his fingertips move over John’s wrist, he can feel John’s pulse. It’s as fast as his own, as hard and strong. He wants to know how it would feel under his lips, or his tongue. He’s trying to decide whether it’s too soon for that, whether he should or could ask permission, when John’s fingers close over the heel of his hand. 

His mind tells him he’ll freeze now, but his body overrules it with a strange ease. He watches his fingers rearrange themselves, threading with John’s until their hands are clasped together. John squeezes very hard, and Ben matches him until their joints go white. In another time, it might hurt. It’s still hard to imagine objecting enough to let go. In this grip, Ben can feel what it might be like to be held by him, deliberately and not by accident. So unlike the false welcomes of his hired hands or the passing contact from people he knew. Utilitarian touches that only lasted as long as they had to, confirming his belief in the ugliness inside him. John holds on. John accepts him, all in all. His heart swells, and a warmth he’s never felt ripples through his body. It lasts until he looks up.

John’s eyes are wider now, his mouth pressed into a thin, miserable line. “I’m scared outta my mind,” he says. 

He hasn’t released Ben’s hand. Ben squeezes harder, without meaning to. This doesn’t mean John will let go. It doesn’t have to mean that. “Scared of me?” Ben says.

“No. I know you can’t hurt me anymore.”

“It’s not just that I can’t. I wouldn’t, not in any way.”

John swallows hard. “But I would. I’d hurt us both. It’s inevitable.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what I do. I can’t keep a good thing going. I can never get what I want. I always fuck it up in the end.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. You didn’t bring all that trouble on yourself, you have to know that. You told me I couldn’t see myself, and I’m not the only one. You’re a good man, John.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know the kind of thoughts I had when you got here.”

“Nothing you thought about me could be worse than what I did to you.” 

“You don’t understand. There’s so much I haven’t told you.”

“You can tell me anything. Or nothing. Whatever you need.”

He takes an uneasy breath and stares down at their hands for a while. His voice shakes when he speaks again. “Being here alone so long, with so much time to think…I really thought I was past all this. I still thought about you, and had the dreams, and missed you, but I could deal with it. Because I knew the worst of it was over. You’d made your feelings pretty clear with that cord. That’s all I knew, and I accepted it, and I kept right on feeling what I felt, no matter how stupid and crazy it seemed. Because that’s what I do. Everybody else is allowed to hurt me, and all I can do is come back for more. Let them do what they gotta do. Take it, and never give it back. You know, I actually thought that was my whole purpose for a while. When I got suckered into leaving this place, and I went to them, one by one, and I was so goddamn desperate that they couldn’t help but see it, they just threw it back in my face. Even Hugo, and that wasn’t like him at all. And it led me to that room and that cord, and I had to make that okay in my mind. I couldn’t look at it and see that they had no right to talk to me like that, like they were perfect and I was nothing, and it didn’t matter that I was dangling off a cliff. Somehow, pushing me off it didn’t make them assholes. Because they gave me my purpose. I died for them. My life was never my own, and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t even choose my own death, in the end. It was all about them, them being the hero, them saving the world, or whatever the hell they did, with barely a thought for me. Just walking over my corpse on the way someplace else. And that’s fucked, Ben. It really is. I wasn’t put on this earth to be a human sacrifice.”

“No, you weren’t,” Ben says dumbly, too mired in fresh guilt to think of something better. John doesn’t acknowledge it. The words keep pouring out, and he’s on the verge of tears now.

“And I thought I had my reward. When I was getting ready to do it, I thought about waking up here, seeing that light again. How that would be heaven for me. And I didn’t think much beyond that. There was a light when I woke up, but it was the sun. I was on the beach where we crashed, right in the same spot where I woke up then. But there was no plane, nobody screaming, just me in my old clothes, with my knife and all my stuff. For a minute, I thought I dreamed my last few weeks. Leaving, trying to bring them back, staying in that damn motel a month before I finally decided to end it. And then I remembered what you did, and I couldn’t get up for hours. Raging at you, but crying for you, too, for what we could have been. Trying to understand. Crying for myself, and the life I never got to live. I walked for weeks after that, covered every inch of this place, scared as hell. Because it couldn’t be that I’d gotten what I wanted. There had to be somebody around, with plans for me. But it was just me and this place, and that was such a relief. And such a disappointment. Nobody could hurt me, but nobody could be here with me, either. Helen and I went on vacation once, just the two of us, up in the mountains. Didn’t see another soul for five days, didn’t want to. I could have stayed there with her forever. I never needed a lot of people around. Just the one. That’s when I figured it out, what you said the other night. This place couldn’t love me like a person could. I thought about her a lot, but I didn’t want her to come here. This wasn’t her place, and I wasn’t the one for her. Wherever she was, I didn’t want to disturb her. I figured I’d be alone forever, but safe, and I made my peace with that, and found some contentment in it. But what I really wanted…When I brought the mangoes and you told me about the books, you asked me what it had given me.”

Ben shakes his head helplessly, his own eyes filling as John’s tears spill. He knows the answer to that question, the simple and unbelievable answer. John wanted something Ben could never have imagined for himself.

“It was you. That’s all I wanted, but I never asked for it. Not out loud. I kept it out of my mind when I was listening, I thought other thoughts. But I guess it heard me anyway. I’d catch myself wanting you here, in spite of everything, and I’d force myself to stop and remember. I’d tell myself how pathetic it was, and how dangerous. You were there and I was here, and as long as we stayed apart, it was okay. I was fine. But something was always missing. I was always looking forward to something that wasn’t happening, like I did way back on the mainland, all my life. But I wanted this to be the kind of heaven where nothing was complicated, where I didn’t have to think about all the awful shit that happened to me. I tried to separate you into parts and just leave out the ones that hurt me. I wanted the Ben who understood everything. The one who let me cry to him, and gave me enough hope to stop. The one with so much inside him that he couldn’t hide from me. If I could have all that, I’d have everything. I’d never have to deal with anything messy. There’d finally be time for us, and you’d want to know me, and maybe you’d come to feel something for me. All I’d have to do was try and feel like nothing was missing. Like you were real, and not just an idea I had of you, just this thing I threw together out of wishful thinking. But when you finally got here…it was really you. All of you, as far as I knew that day. You came back. And a part of me was happy. So happy.”

He lets out a soft sob. His hand has gone slack around Ben’s. Ben can’t stop himself, can’t sit here passively and let his heart sink under the weight of all this remembered pain and grim anticipation. He leans forward and lays his free hand on John’s cheek, as if he can hold on to him that way. John closes his eyes and gives a deep, shivering sigh. He brings his other hand up over Ben’s and presses, his stubble sharp against Ben’s palm. This is the face Ben saw in the motel that night, hopeless and helpless, wet with tears. He wants to take it in his hands and kiss all that away. Make him smile again. Make him forget. But John takes Ben’s hand from his face and moves it back down to the table, then sits back in his chair. Ben’s hands are empty, but he can still feel the ghost of that pressure and warmth, fading away. He doesn’t move, as if keeping still will make John more likely to reach out again. John’s posture goes limp, his eyes downcast.

“But it wasn’t the biggest part,” he goes on, “like you saw. Like I tried to make you feel. I loved being able to run around and do anything without getting hurt. Never breaking a leg again, that was a big plus. But I hated it right then. I wanted to hurt you so bad. I was so fucking furious, like I hadn’t been since the day I got here. And so scared. And I didn’t understand why you were saying you were sorry. Why you looked sad. I never would have expected that. I thought you were making fun of me again, but you kept at it afterwards. I told you I didn’t care, but I did, and that just made me madder. Because I didn’t know how much I wanted you to be sorry, how much it meant to me. You could still make me feel so much, and I hated that. I wanted to hate you, and I got close. I worked up my anger every way I could. I took my knife to the ground, cut it up like I wanted to cut you. Gut you like a boar. I wound vines around tree branches the size of your neck and squeezed, like I could do to you what you did to me. Yelled and screamed about it all until I couldn’t stand the sound of my own voice anymore. But that’s not…I want you to understand the rest of it, but then I don’t. I guess there’s all kinds of reasons for it, but none of them are good. Nothing makes it okay.”

“You tell me whatever you need to tell me. Don’t worry about how it sounds or what I might think. I’m the last person to judge you.”

He sighs again and seems to deflate even further, as if growing smaller. His eyes are dry, but more desolate than ever. “I want you to understand…it’s been so long for me, since I had anybody. There was Helen, and then there was a girl at the commune, but we were too high to do much that night. And then there was nothing. Just sinking, deeper and deeper. I went out to the bars a few times, but didn’t talk to anybody, not even to use some stupid line. And I could have, for a while. Physically, anyway. Could have picked somebody up and brought her back to my shitty little apartment and done it all. But it got so hard to walk out that door most days. I just stalled out. There was nothing I really wanted to do, no future plans, only a long string of failures to look back on. If I stayed where I was, I could just exist without repeating any of it. I watched a lot of TV, all kinds of things, lots of nature shows. There was a whole show about boars one day. But I was found out eventually. The world came in, and I went out that window. Half my body gone, but still right there. And what I wouldn’t have given to have it all back. To walk into a bar and find somebody to have a good time with. To be able to feel it. I held on to that hope long enough to get pretty bitter about it, and I was never more invisible. But even here, when it all changed, nobody came knocking at my door. I was a little like you then. I tried not to need it, and after so long without it, I could keep going on that way. I’d been hurt enough, trying to get what I needed from other people, trying to give them something they’d put any kind of value on. I wanted the Island to be everything. And then I met you, and got to thinking about you that way, and I resented the hell out of you for stirring all that up again.”

He chuckles a little. Ben offers a half-smile, but neither of them last long. “Like it was your fault,” John says. “Like it wasn’t me being stupid, trying to deny this perfectly natural thing. Like I could stop it anyway. You wouldn’t talk to me like I wanted you to, and it drove me crazy. I had all these dreams…I was always trying to get your mouth open. I thought I was only after secrets about this place, but then, I wanted yours, too. By the end of it, I just wanted to get inside you, in every way I could. And here, it was so much worse. When I could separate out everything that hurt, I wanted you so bad I couldn’t see straight. Some days, I couldn’t walk a mile without stopping somewhere to get off. Like the world’s oldest teenager, but so much more focused than that. It was about you, not just anybody. Sometimes I thought so long and hard about you that it felt like you were here. All around me, but out of sight and out of reach. I could feel the warmth of your skin, from those few times you touched me, but _everywhere._ I’d already be sweating under the sun, and then you’d be there, and I’d be drenched. I could smell you, all that soap and sweat and _ache_. I could hear your voice, right on the line between a memory and a real sound. Saying my name. Telling me everything. Telling me you wanted me, you always wanted me. Taking me over, sense by sense. Nothing and nobody ever made me come like that when I was alive. It was hard to believe you couldn’t feel it, too, somehow. Or that you wouldn’t even want to. Maybe you’d touch the tree I was holding myself up on, or walk across the ground where I collapsed, and you’d feel me, too. I’d be real to you. I’d do it under the stars, right outside these empty barracks, and try to call you out of your bed without saying a word. I’d be ready to rip those damn pajamas off and show you what we missed out on. Maybe you’d think you were dreaming, maybe you’d know you weren’t. It wouldn’t really matter. Nothing would keep you away from me. I’d know you, all of you, inside and out. And one night, you’d come to stay for good. We could go on from there, like that was our whole story. Like nothing bad ever happened, and it was just an accident that we ever got separated in the first place. But it couldn’t be like that. It would always end, and I’d have to remember again. And knowing I couldn’t have you and would never have you…it was the closest thing to physical pain for me here. I could never accept it and go on. It couldn’t just be easy. I don’t _get_ easy. And there was so much I still didn’t know about you…” 

John’s tears come again suddenly, obliterating all the beautiful pictures he’s put in Ben’s mind, clearing away the warm fog of longing and arousal. The impulse to comfort and care for John is stronger than ever, but John has managed to move further and further away without moving his chair. He’s pressed firmly to the back of it, body turned to the side and away from Ben. Ben still doesn’t move, but finds one of his hands clenched, nails digging painlessly into the palm.

“Everything got mixed up,” John says. His breath catches, but he bites his lip and tries to steel himself. “That day. Everything but your apology. I couldn’t see it anymore. All that rage, all that want…I couldn’t hold it all inside me. I wanted to give it to you. It didn’t matter that you didn’t want me. I wanted to hold you down and use you, and make you do whatever I wanted. Every part of you, mine. I’d hurt you the only way I could, and I could do it forever. I could take you apart until you were nothing. I was bigger, and stronger, and nobody else could make you pay for what you did. For what you were. You wouldn’t have one second of peace. You’d have nothing but the hell I made for you. And that would be my heaven. Forever.”

Ben is silent, a vague twinge of fear tightening his chest. This was never among the injuries he sustained or the threats made against him. He never gave it a thought, which seems like a luxury now. He can see the man he was before he knew the truth about himself and what he felt for John. He sees himself cut down by any number of those he wronged, or the monster, or the Island itself, dying without his long repentance. He wakes in his bedroom, and John is on him. He can’t imagine the acts themselves, can’t place them and John in the same context. All he sees is himself on the floor, beaten but not bleeding, tortured but never dying. And John, enormous in his power, stalking around the house. Mad eyes gleaming. 

“If you know me at all,” John pleads through his tears, “you know I’d never really do that.”

“I do know that.”

“Then why are you afraid of me?”

“I’m not. I couldn’t help imagining, if I’d never changed and you’d lost your mind here, what could have happened to us…But it never happened and never would, John. It’s just a dark thought that came from a dark place. I can’t know what I would have thought about you, if we’d switched places. It probably would have been worse. It doesn’t have to change anything.”

“It’s _crazy_ , Ben. I really went crazy. I never thought that way about anybody else. I never got it all mixed up like that. There’s something wrong…I used up so much passion hating myself, and trying to figure out people I should never have wasted a second on. Trying to mean something to them, and understand why they were hurting me. There wasn’t much left for Helen, or anybody else. Until this place. And then you, and what I feel for you…nothing else comes close. And that should be a good thing, but it’s fucking terrifying. I can’t trust myself with you. You've been hurt enough. I can’t start up with you, knowing it might be over anytime, because of me and whatever stupid, crazy thing I come up with next. I couldn’t take that, Ben. I just couldn’t.”

“I trust you. I can trust you enough for both of us. It never has to be over. All I want to do is make you happy. I want that passion. I want everything you have for me. I’m greedy for it, John.”

“I want to give it to you. But I can’t get past this.”

“You did once. You had those thoughts the day you first saw me here, and then what? It was a long time before you first came to see me. You were angry, but not like that.”

“Because I scared the shit out of myself. I crossed a line I didn’t want to cross, and I didn’t want to think about it anymore. And I wanted to know the truth. I still wanted to know you, as much as I hated myself for that. Everything you said…you made yourself a person, in my eyes. I couldn’t have my own idea of you anymore, couldn’t separate one part from another. The Ben who hurt me was the same one who wanted me and felt for me. I could see all the flaws you had and the bad choices you made, but all the good parts, too. The vulnerable little man I always knew was there. The only one who understood me, and loved this place as much as I did, and would always stay. I finally knew I wasn’t crazy or stupid to hold a candle for you, to still hold it after everything, and that blew me away. But I couldn’t get past what you did. I still can’t, but coming to know you…I fought myself for so long. I couldn’t stay away, but I couldn’t come here and make you think everything was fine, but I _couldn’t stay away_. I wasn’t so angry anymore, and I tried to just go on. I tested myself, bringing you the mangoes. I spent that night with you, not knowing what would happen, letting it be, and it was the best I ever had. I came here tonight wanting it all, thinking I could be with you, finally…and all this godawful mess comes back on me, and I can’t see a way past it. I know I reminded you of something earlier, when you were in there about to bring the wine and I looked at you. And that’s never gonna end. I wish the motel never happened. I wish it could all be different.”

John cries quietly for a while. Ben knows he’s been trying to just go on, too, in a kind of happy, lusty fugue, holding John’s hand tonight as if it were the first time. As if nothing mattered but the now, and things could finally be easy for them. He still has to pay, and John has to pay for him. Ben sits and listens until he can’t take it anymore. He forces himself up from the table and approaches John, with no real idea of what he’s doing. He only offers himself. John looks up, his eyes ridiculously green with all that red in them, and moves forward in the chair, almost too fast to be seen. He throws his arms around Ben, crushingly tight, and Ben almost loses his footing under the impact. Now the freeze comes. 

He shouts obscenities at it in his head, words he has never and will never say out loud. It won’t ruin this for him, or even delay it. It doesn’t matter that everything’s gone wrong and this may be all they ever have. John will have this comfort he seeks, and Ben will have his moment of being able to give it. John’s head is pressed to his chest, his ear over Ben’s pounding heart. Ben lays his trembling hand over the smooth skin and presses, wraps his other arm around John’s broad shoulders. John sighs deeply and squeezes him harder. Ben’s body briefly threatens to respond the wrong way, but the tension gets lost in a breathless wave of tenderness. He closes his eyes and holds on, and everything else recedes. It’s not as much as they need, but enough for this moment, or hour, or however long they’ve been this way. John’s head is turning, his breath hot on Ben’s chest. Ben opens his eyes. John looks up at him, all heat and light. One hand moves slowly upward to cradle the back of Ben’s neck, John’s face inching up toward his.

It’s incomprehensible, particularly now that Ben’s brain has folded into some intricate new shape that doesn’t quite work yet. He barely hears the little sound of surprise he makes when John’s lips meet his, blood rushing in his ears. Once more, he’s struck by softness, but the wet warmth of John’s mouth is entirely new. The freeze tries to return. He can’t process a single threat against it. He only moves, his hands on John’s face, his mouth opening. For a second, that’s all he knows how to do. It’s as if he’s never done this before, never paid top dollar for just a few extra minutes of it. John’s tongue touches his, moves slowly along the tip of it. He sucks softly at it, invitingly. Ben knows he’s really going to stumble this time and doesn’t care. He sinks down into John and kisses him deep. John moans softly, and Ben feels the vibration of it all the way down to his toes. It’s no longer a question of one part of him having a mind of its own. His whole body is focused, ready, full of blood and desire. John’s hands drift down to the small of his back, then lower. Every nerve lights up with pleasure, and John kisses him harder. One stray, terrified thought makes it through. _This is going to end. Or, it isn’t._ He breathes through the fear, finds the note of joy in it that anything has happened at all. John breaks the kiss and lays his head against Ben’s chest again. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes.

It takes Ben quite a while to catch his own breath, to make enough sense of the words to give an answer, of a sort. “Okay. Okay.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“John, no. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I have to go. I wish I could tell you when I’ll be back. Or if…I wish it could be different.”

The instinct to fight this further, to spin some elaborate manipulation that will keep John here and keep Ben safe from pain, only exists in a fragment of his mind now. But it’s there. He feels a strange lurch inside that may have been nausea in another time, and a flush of shame blends uneasily with his fading arousal. There’s no way around this. He can take it. He has to take it. 

John disengages quickly, stands up and approaches the door. Ben slumps into John’s chair, keenly aware of its warmth as everything inside and outside him seems to slow down. It’s like stepping into a long-sealed room, dimly lit, cold from the lack of life inside. John is leaving again. Ben swallows the lump in his throat to speak. 

“I had to live forty more years without you. I got through it. I won’t say easily, but I could do it again. I could do it over and over. For you.”

“You shouldn’t have to. I’m not worth all that.”

Ben shakes his head. “This is what I’ve done to you. What we all did to you. This is the lesson we made sure you would learn. We looked at you and saw everything we weren’t, and we couldn’t stand it. You had to be destroyed. You didn’t do anything wrong, John. You didn’t.” 

He holds himself up on the doorframe, then opens the door. “I’m gonna go now.”

“I’ll be here.” 

One more second’s hesitation, and he’s gone. Ben picks up their glasses, then gets up to wash the dishes. He won’t mourn a death that hasn’t happened. He won’t lose hope. He won’t shed a tear. Even now, his vision isn’t blurry. Everything is clear, and he can easily tell the suds from the plates. He’ll finish tidying up and read for a while, as if nothing has happened. This is a night like dozens of others, like so many days, all waiting and false hope and eventual disappointment. Just like his life.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John appears at Ben's house in the middle of the night and proposes a pact. Contains explicit sex.
> 
> From my original LiveJournal post, the song for this chapter is "Colorblind" by Counting Crows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not using the canon afterlife scenes or concepts at all. This conclusion to my Summerland Trilogy will have a happy ending that's 100% real. The other characters listed appear only in conversation or flashbacks.

Someone is pounding at the door, more than loud enough to be heard over the rain. Ben flinches awake and looks at the clock. A quarter past three in the morning. He knows it could only be John, but a visitor in the dead of night is still unnerving. It never meant welcome news in the old days, though he understands now how much he relished John’s first, armed appearance in this house. Sometimes, with Hugo, it meant one more part of the old order was falling. Hugo came knocking while the first birth was in progress, around this time. He waited through it with Ben, understanding his silence, his fear of it all going wrong again. After the word came that all was well, they were too charged to sleep. They watched the sunrise from the porch, happily overwhelmed. This visit could be a good thing. Even the best thing. Or it could be something other than John, some terrible presence having crept into their world, for revenge or pure torment. He tries to scoff, but it doesn’t go well. At this hour, anything seems possible. 

He reaches under the mattress for his baton, knowing that if the rules hold, it won’t do any damage. All the same, it makes this a little easier. He extends the baton as he approaches the living room window, slowly and silently. He parts the curtains a fraction of an inch and peers out. There’s John, drenched. Ben briefly entertains the idea that someone or something else really is here, and John has come to warn him about it. But if John only wanted to talk to him, he didn’t have to wait all day and night to come here, especially if Ben was in danger. Maybe something else has changed. Ben opens the door, trying not to expect anything, failing to quiet his stuttering heart. For a long moment, they only stare at each other. The pain of their last parting is vivid in Ben’s memory, but he doesn’t see it in John’s eyes. Before he can puzzle out what he does see, John speaks.

“Can I come in?” John says.

Ben steps aside. “Of course.” 

“Sorry I was so loud,” John says, entering quickly, so soaked that his boots make squelching sounds. “I was afraid you wouldn’t hear me. It’s a pretty good storm.” 

His clothes are stuck to his skin, stretched by the weight of the water. Ben closes the door behind him and sets the baton down. He lets his eyes linger over that broad back, thick with muscle, then lower. John turns around. Ben forces his gaze back up at the last second and bites the inside of his cheek, trying desperately to rein himself in. 

“Yes,” Ben says, “it’s been raining since before I went to bed. It’s…good to see you.”

“Sorry it’s so late.”

He’s wide awake, he realizes. He couldn’t go back to sleep now if he tried. “I don’t mind. I’d offer you some water, but you look like you’ve had enough.”

“No, I could use some. I’ve been walking a while. Didn’t bring anything.”

Ben goes into the kitchen and fills a glass for John, then one for himself. Drinking it will give him something to do, besides staring. “Where did you come from?”

“I don’t know, a couple hours out.”

“That far?” He gives John his glass and moves away toward the refrigerator, not wanting to seem like he’s trying to get too close. John only takes a sip. He watches Ben for a moment, then glances at the floor.

“I’m making a mess,” he says.

“It’s only water.” He smiles a little, thinking of Alex. “Nobody’s made a mess here in a long time.”

John stares at him, his eyes madly bright. His hand trembles around the glass. Ben reaches for something to say. “Are you cold?” he says. “I could get you a towel.”

“I’m not cold.”

“I could find you some dry—”

“I haven’t gotten past everything. I haven’t forgiven you.”

He definitely preferred a stuttering heart to a sinking one. “I don’t expect you to.”

“I’m not saying it won’t happen,” John says, his voice low and shaky, “because I’m trying, every day. I’m saying I’m not there yet. And maybe that means I’m not ready and I shouldn’t be here, but I can’t go back to the way it was before. It was hard to stay away then, but it’s _impossible_ now. I’m tired of thinking about what you did to me, and I know you must be, too. I wanna pretend that night never happened. Just that one night, that one thing that’s holding us back. We’re good at pretending, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but…it’s an enormous thing to pretend away.”

“I know. It’s a lot to ask. It’s not the same as just going on. It’s a lot to keep from thinking about, to keep from even looking like you’re thinking about it. And it hasn’t been long at all since I was here. Maybe a month. But every day feels _so damn long_. We had forty years apart. We’ve done our time. This is where we are now. This is what’s possible.” 

Ben forces himself to breathe and think, already trembling. “It could all fall apart so quickly. What happens if we slip? Or we can’t pretend anymore?”

“Then we find a way through it. Together, and for good. And I wish I could think of one right now. Can you?”

“No.”

“I want you to know…I’m not trying to play any games with you here. I’m just tired of waiting around for some time that’s never coming, when everything’s perfect. If this is bad for you, I need to know it. It’s not just about me. I know how hard it would be to say no, but I swear I’m not out to corner you. I can’t go along with anything that’s gonna make you unhappy, doesn’t matter if it was my idea or not.”

Ben swallows hard. “It won’t. What about you? Will it make you happy?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think I might be ready for that now. I’m gonna try and feel like I deserve it and can have it. I’m gonna try not to be so scared, but I’m not sure how well that’ll work. I need you to help me. I really need you.”

“So do I. You know my answer. It could never be anything else.” 

John takes a breath and lets it go. His eyes shine. “I want us to have the life we dreamed about. What we were shown when we were too stubborn and stupid to make it happen. Because that was a promise to us. After all that struggle and all that misery, there’d be something good waiting here. Do you believe that? Do you wanna have that with me?”

Ben’s chin wobbles, and he doesn’t trust his voice. He hopes nodding is enough. 

“Okay,” John answers, his voice soft and breathy, his eyes full of light and heat. “Okay.”

There’s a long, staring silence. John laughs. “Should I have broken the door down and grabbed you?”

Ben can’t quite laugh, but it’s a relief anyway. He grins. “That would have been awfully confusing.”

“I had to say my piece anyway…And I’m coming over there. Any day now.”

“I hope so, because I can’t move.” John smiles wider, and is suddenly very close.

For a second, he seems absurdly tall. The difference between them isn’t more than a few inches, Ben knows, and soon enough, he feels himself stretching up toward John, body adjusting of its own volition. John lays his hand on Ben’s face. The coolness of the water soon gives way to the heat under his skin. Ben gives a tiny gasp. John leans in and kisses him, softly and briefly. Ben freezes completely, his mouth barely open. Cursing it away won’t do this time. He vows to annihilate it, to open himself wide and cut it clean away, breaking every physical law of this place by sheer force of will. John knows what to do, and Ben couldn’t be more grateful for their drunken night together. He wraps his arms around Ben, squeezing, pressing their bodies together. The rainwater seeps into Ben’s pajamas, followed again by heat. His skin flushes all over, and he trembles until his teeth chatter. John holds him close, his hands sliding up and down Ben’s back.

John is the temple, taking Ben in and not finding him lacking. That awe and adoration go hot and thick around his heart, but this time, there’s no mystery as to where they’re coming from. He feels everything just as keenly from without as from within. For the moment, he doesn’t rail against his disobedient body or terrify himself with the knowledge that this is really happening. He lets himself be held. He can’t compare it to their odd morning together, or the bright spots of the other night. John’s strength and warmth still overwhelm him, but the real revelation is that this is only the beginning. John is here to stay. There’s a great throb of blood through Ben’s body, and a much greater spasm of joy. The freeze can’t withstand it all, and as it melts away, it’s hard to imagine it coming back. This kind of touch isn’t such a rarity anymore, and won’t be again. _No more strangers_ , Ben thinks. _Only the one it always should have been_. His chest goes tight as his hands skid over the wet fabric on John’s back, then slide upward and pull him closer. John exhales slowly.

“You okay?” he whispers.

“Yes,” Ben whispers back, and John’s mouth is on his.

Now that this isn’t such a shock and there’s time to savor, all he can think is how clever the hired hands were, making him think he was being kissed when he clearly wasn’t. Whatever they were doing to him, it wasn’t this. John’s mouth moves slowly with Ben’s, opens slowly, with a little suck at the lip here, a brief stroke of the tongue there. He hears a few small, soft noises from deep in the throat, but can’t always be sure which are his and which are John’s, can’t tell a vocal vibration from his own trembling. His tongue slips deeper into John’s mouth, and John matches him, tasting, consuming. This can’t be real. The urgency of knowing what’s to come is too far away, lost in this deepening kiss. John soon finds it for him, his body pushing forward from the hips, hard flesh grinding together as he backs Ben up against the refrigerator. Ben gasps in John’s quaking mouth, taking in hot breath. John’s mouth moves to Ben’s neck, kissing and sucking, gently setting his teeth against tender skin. Heat blooms there, mixed with a painless tingle of jangling nerves, a mad pleasure Ben can barely take. He reaches out blindly, his hands finding John’s face. He has to touch and taste, has to hold on. His mouth moves over the scar under John’s eye. That mark he knew for what it was. That piece of John he missed when it wasn’t in the old pictures, as if it had always been there and was merely hidden for most of his life. He presses his tongue deep into the groove of it, and John’s moan would bring Ben to his knees if he wasn’t clinging so tightly, one leg wrapped around John’s calf. 

John kisses him much harder now, fumbling with the buttons of his pajama shirt, pulling at it. It’s taking too long. They need to be closer than clothes allow, and it needs to happen now. Ben rips the shirt open himself, buttons skittering across the floor. It’s off in two hard pulls, and he has a quick flash of himself doing this to every pair in his dresser, astounded at the thought that he’ll be sleeping naked with John for all the nights to come. He goes after John’s shirt next, peeling it off his back and over his head. He has to know the feel of another body against his, with no barrier, for the first time. The smooth, warm press of John’s chest is the strangest revelation, as if Ben has suddenly grown a full body after all those years as nothing but a strip of flesh down the middle, shirt opened and undershirt removed for the occasion. John’s body burns through the last of the rain’s coolness, clean sweat washing away the sweet smell of the water. His hands are on Ben’s back, radiating heat down his spine. Their breaths come louder, shakier, through hard kisses. John’s hand slips under the waistband of Ben’s pajamas, into his boxers, to take hold of him. 

Ben breaks the kiss and whimpers a fragment of garbled speech, a few random syllables tumbling out as his cock throbs and begins to drip over John’s fingers. Everything goes silent for a second, and then their breathing and the rain outside come through much sharper than before. It happens again as John gives him a long, slow stroke, then another, lingering at the head. That rough palm exceeds his imagination completely. Pleasure scorches him, pushes beads of sweat through every pore. John still isn’t kissing him. He opens his eyes to see John watching him, adoring him, his eyes dark with want, his wide mouth slack. He could come from this alone, deafened for much longer than a second. Maybe an hour. It’s much too soon. It doesn’t matter that this is only the first time, that it might only be the first time _tonight_. He has to hold himself off, has to give and receive as much as he can, this time and every time. He’s greedy for it.

“Let me…” he whispers, before John can move his hand again. “Let me.” 

He drops to his knees before John, surprised he can negotiate a belt buckle and zipper while shaking so badly. The first man he hired gave him some modicum of knowledge about this, as the first woman had, but he felt too foolish to use his mouth on any of the others. He didn’t need any more of their feigned pleasure and enthusiasm than he was already getting, and tried to ignore the hollow feeling of receiving without giving. John’s cock is beautiful, fat and gnarled with veins, much harder than any other man’s has ever been for him. Ben takes it into his mouth, tasting rainwater on John’s smooth skin. Here’s the pulse on his tongue, stronger and faster than it was in his fantasies, coupled with a fractured gasp he could scarcely have imagined. Unreality washes over him again. It can’t be this good. John’s going to change his mind and stop this. He's going to see the wrongness everyone else saw in Ben and be repulsed. Ben’s going to wake up from this dream alone, and stay that way forever. He pushes it all away and begins to suck. 

“Ben,” John breathes, and that almost finishes Ben then and there, with no need to touch himself. He never asked them to repeat his aliases to him, to cry out his false name at the height of feigned passion. John knows the real one, knows everything, and still wants Ben. It all comes out in that breath, all adoration and ecstasy. Something close to worship. Ben’s chest clenches, but this time, it’s not too much. He’ll take that worship and give it back, with everything he has. He’ll be John’s temple. He braces himself with one hand on John’s ass, squeezes that perfect swell of muscled flesh through his pants. The other hand goes around John’s shaft, works in tandem with Ben’s mouth at the head. John’s moan is long and loud and gorgeous, a full-throated cry of bliss. Ben can scarcely believe he made that happen. He feels a rush alarmingly similar to that of gaining power in the old days, but it’s absurd to imagine using this as a weapon, even in a past like his. He couldn’t lord this ability over John if he tried, because John has it, too. There’s no potential for corruption in it, no possibility of harm. Just the two of them, pleasing each other in every way they can, over and over again. The thought of it fills him with new vigor, but John is reaching for him.

“Ben,” he says, “I can’t…I’m…”

For one awful moment, Ben assumes John really is going to stop this. He barely has time to release John before John is falling on top of him and they’re tumbling to the floor together. He smacks his head on the tile and almost laughs, but John is kissing him again, his arms slipping between Ben’s body and the floor, hands clutching Ben’s ass. Ben’s body rises up toward John’s without conscious thought, grinds against John’s automatically, seeking more and more. John groans out a curse and answers with a thrust of his own, hard and insistent and _thorough._ Ben cries out his name, his whole body tingling with want and bliss. John goes still, as if it’s over for him, but soon brings his hands up to run through Ben’s hair, to lay on his cheek.

“Ben,” he says, a new rasp in his voice.

Ben finds John’s face with his hand again, before he can open his eyes. John looks incredible this way, flushed and gleaming with sweat, eyes even darker now. He smiles. “Sorry I fell on you. I was trying to tell you my knees don’t work when that’s going on.”

“Oh,” Ben says, and chuckles a little, imagining John’s past mishaps. John joins him for a moment, then kisses him softly. The fire in his eyes when he pulls back sends Ben in for another kiss, lifting his head up toward John, finding that tongue and sucking it. John makes the same _mmm_ he made when Ben fed him, but deeper now, longer, wanton enough to make Ben ache for him. He remembers storing the previous one away in his memory and using it more than he would have thought possible, along with the memory of their first kiss, and he’d laugh again if his mouth wasn’t so pleasantly occupied. He wonders if he’ll ever quite believe he doesn’t have to pretend that way anymore. He tells himself he has to memorize every second of this night, but knows there’s no way he can rely on his brain when his body feels this way. When his heart is this wide open. 

“I need you to tell me what you want to do right now,” John says. “Cause I want everything all at once, and I’m gonna drive myself nuts trying to get it. I know it’s hard for you...but can you tell me?”

John’s cock is pressed hard into the place where Ben’s pelvis meets his thigh. Ben knows his answer. He wants John much closer, all the way inside. He looks around and behind himself at the cabinets, murmurs about them, strains to reach them. John eases off him a bit, and his body screams for that contact to come back. He holds it off with promises and finds a bottle of cooking oil nearby, in the cabinet next to the oven. He pushes it into John’s hands and does his best to say the words.

“I want you to…you can use that to…” He gives up and pulls John down for one more quick kiss.

“Okay,” John says, his voice huskier than ever, and Ben is grateful beyond words that John is still such a quick study. 

John sets the oil down and hooks his fingers under Ben’s pajama bottoms and boxers. No one’s ever seen Ben completely naked, and here they are under fluorescent lights, no less. He doesn’t know what John will see in this slight and hairy and terribly aroused body. Ben’s instinct is to close his eyes against this exposure, to give in to the stupid fear that John somehow doesn’t want quite this much of him. He defies it, watching John as he peels the clothes away and tosses them aside. John takes in the sight of him and loses his breath for a moment. He doesn’t look away. He gives a soft, broken sigh of deep desire. This is what gods feel like, Ben is certain. Perfect and revered and longed for, wholly and completely. John keeps looking for a time, then pulls Ben up to him, kisses him, holds him tightly before turning him onto his hands and knees. Ben’s heart pounds harder. This is really going to happen. 

There’s no hesitation in John’s oiled fingers, deftly easing Ben open. Ben feels ready for him before one finger is all the way inside him, but John isn’t rushing through this. His breaths are quieter now, but no less excited. His other hand caresses Ben’s ass, then moves down to his cock. That oiled hand is almost too much to bear, all its softness and roughness as sharply intensified as its movement. Ben gasps and thrusts into it, squeezing the fingers inside him, aching to be filled completely. John lets out a tortured breath and slips another finger in, but doesn’t move any closer, doesn’t take the other hand back for his own pleasure. He keeps giving. There’s never been a good time to remember the monster, but Ben understands why it’s happening now. It stole John’s memories of himself with his lovers and his fantasies about Ben, used them to taunt and tease. It knew they were powerful things, but wasn’t equipped to understand just how powerful. To it, John was nothing but a jumble of deadly flaws and stupid, unquenchable longings. It thought it knew everything there was to know about him, but its knowledge was so hollow. It could never have understood what it was to be touched and cared for by him, to give him that in turn, to be the one to receive when he gave of himself. It never saw the beauty in this man. Ben pities it. John brushes against something inside that seems to spark at his touch. Ben is far beyond ready.

“Please,” he breathes. “Please, now.”

“Yeah,” John whispers, and gives Ben’s cock one more stroke before letting go to move much closer behind him.

Ben hears him slicking himself up, hears the click of his belt buckle against the floor as he pulls down his pants. John’s hand goes tight on his hip. The fingers are gone, and John is sinking into him slowly, so slowly. Ben can’t control his greed. He begins to move toward John, but John stops him with that single strong hand on his hip, his breath hitching. Ben could be selfish now, could be merciless, but he’s momentarily brought close to coming by the thought that John must be, too, that he’s done this to John. He stays still, bites his lip, tries to make it last. One more slow, steady push, and John is all the way inside. He goes silent. Ben gasps, stretched and filled and overwhelmed. All he can think is, _this is him. This is John._ A million pictures run through Ben’s mind. He sees those eyes crinkling with laughter, streaming with tears, sees all John’s anger and fascination and desire. All of John, all for him now. Heat rises in Ben’s body as John begins to move. The push and pull of it is beautifully strange, much better than his fantasies. And then John changes his angle and hits that spark again, much more directly. 

Ben hears himself cry out, then hears nothing for a long moment. Maybe the hired hands weren’t embellishing all that much when it came to this, assuming Ben ever did it properly. It’s a pure jolt of ecstasy, spreading into his cock, lighting up every nerve. The shock of it knocks him off balance, his face and arms and shoulders going flat on the floor, the rest of him trying to push back into John, desperate for more. John gives it to him, sounding as stunned as Ben feels. Ben grapples for some mundane and sexless memory to distract himself with, some board game of Hugo’s, or a set of facts and figures from their working life. Anything to postpone the inevitable. But it’s clear that John isn’t going to let him think his way through this. Every stroke feels better than the last, and John’s sounds are soft and hungry. Ben almost dreads the moment his pleasure will deafen him completely. There’s no decision involved in giving himself up to this, no thought. It’s as natural as his frenzied heartbeat, as the sweat that drips down his face. John’s vise grip on Ben’s hip turns into a soft pull, beckoning him to move. 

Ben lifts himself on unsteady elbows and pushes back onto John’s pulsing cock, loving its thick, solid heat. John moans deeply, beautifully, and lays his other hand over Ben’s tailbone. He lets it drift back and forth with Ben’s movement, going further up his back each time. That oiled callus, sliding over sweaty skin, sends the sweetest shiver up Ben’s spine. He moves faster and harder, making John curse again and grab his shoulder hard. He pounds into Ben, and for a time, they’re both too breathless to make a sound. There’s only the slapping of flesh against flesh. Ben’s elbows slip back out from under him, and his knees start to skid against the smooth tile. John moves him toward the rug, barely breaking his rhythm. Delirious now, Ben thinks of complimenting John on his practicality. All he can manage are hitching breaths and garbled variations on _yes_. John answers with his body, fast and frantic, then slowing abruptly. He drapes himself over Ben, his chest on Ben’s back, his moaning mouth wet and hot on Ben’s neck and shoulders. Ben has never been this hard, but he doesn’t dare touch himself yet. He can feel John’s eyes on him, watching as he moves inside, slow and deep. Ben doesn’t turn his face away, like he would when his hired hands looked. He lets himself be seen.

“Look at you,” John breathes. “Look at you.”

He finds he can look back at John, wanting those worshipful eyes again. He sees those eyes shining, with massively dilated pupils and a depth of feeling he knows he’s reflecting, but still can’t begin to fathom. He sees swollen and parted lips, skin so red and wet and alive. He’ll never get enough of this face, this flesh, this wild, beautiful man. _His_ man. He stretches his neck up toward John and grabs for him, but can’t prop himself up for long. John closes the distance for him, and the kiss is sloppy and delicious. Ben’s body is heavy with exquisite sensation, balls pulled up tight. It won’t be much longer now. He’s sure he can’t take what’s coming. He’ll be annihilated. He’ll lose his grip on this world and go flying into another, and he won’t find John there. He clenches his teeth against it, closes his eyes tighter, but might as well be trying to gather up all the rain outside in a teacup. The pleasure only intensifies, ratcheting up his fear. There’s the point of no return, and then there’s this. John’s breath is in his ear, speaking in a strained half-whisper. 

“Gonna come,” he says.

Ben moans helplessly. “John,” is all he can say, over and over, amazed at how raw he sounds, how utterly exposed. John’s cock throbs inside him, his pace picking up again. Even a one-syllable name is beyond Ben now, and he wraps his hand around his cock. John’s hand replaces it right away. He strokes Ben’s cock the same way he moves inside him, hard, fast, wild. Ben has a mad moment of panic under the surging power of it, a vision of pulling away from this, closing his body to it before he can know it in full. His hand shoots out, fingernails scraping the tile. He hears a short gasp from John, then a deep, sobbing one as John begins to tremble much harder. John knows how to surrender himself. Ben follows his lead, and the fear is gone. All is silent. 

For the first time, his mind doesn’t go cloudy, doesn’t go anywhere else, doesn’t separate from his body at all. John holds him together, holds him to this world. There’s no tile under his hands and feet, no wood or concrete, only earth. For a second, he can smell it, dark and rich. He can feel it give under the heel of his hand as his body contracts around John’s, a new rush of pleasure each time. He tries to push forward into John’s hand and backward into his cock at once, body flailing and spasming. John goes stiff and grabs Ben’s shoulder from underneath with his free hand, a crushing squeeze. He thrusts deep and cries out against the nape of Ben’s neck, a massive vibration Ben wishes he could hear, not just feel. There’s a great throb and burn inside him, and John’s hand goes tighter around his cock, moving in quick, deliberate strokes. He doesn’t stop moving inside Ben. He only thrusts harder and faster, his rhythm gone staccato now. 

Every sensation Ben’s felt tonight seems to gather into one. It’s maddening, bewildering, like no body he’s ever entered and no fantasy he’s ever had. He’s making some sort of sound, something that makes John gasp in his ear. Ben can’t possibly be allowed to feel this good. He can’t give himself to John this way and not be rejected. John’s mouth opens on the soft flesh between Ben’s neck and shoulder, tasting, sucking, taking him in and not finding him lacking. No fear or doubt could survive this final flood of ecstasy, this vast new joy. Every muscle in Ben’s body clenches as he fills John’s hand. Exhilaration bursts through him in rippling vibrations that almost feel like laughter. John cries out with him, holds on to him. Every joint goes numb as John collapses on top of him, the last of Ben’s energy leaving him as they breathe together. When he can hear again, he savors that sound, just as he did when they first laughed together. 

John is still for a long time, his weight a constant reassurance that this was all real, that he’s still here. Ben lets his legs slip out from under him, lets himself go flat and calm and quiet. When John can move again, he lays slow, soft kisses on Ben’s shoulders, his neck, the top of his spine. Ben reaches back for him vaguely, surprised to actually make contact with the side of his face. He strokes stubble, runs his finger over an earlobe. John takes his hand and kisses the palm, then moves halfway off him. He slides a hand under Ben’s face to lift it toward him a little. The kiss is deep and tender and exhausted. Ben’s heart swells to ridiculous proportions. 

They’re soaked with sweat, as wet now as if they’d both been out in the rain. Ben’s vision is hazy with it, and John rolls onto his back on the floor as a blur of naked flesh. Flesh that stops at the crumpled shape of his pants, still around his knees. Ben smiles and swallows, thinking of the big glass of water he’d get if he could move. Maybe a whole pitcher. Maybe he’d just put his mouth under the faucet and run the water at full blast. It’s hard to keep his eyes open, but he won’t let himself fall asleep. He can still feel some lingering sensation from John’s hands, John’s mouth everywhere, John’s body inside his. It’s too good to miss. John says something he has no hope of understanding.

“Huh?” Ben says, his voice barely above a whisper.

John laughs, a little hysterically. Ben smiles, hoping he won’t stop. “I asked if you were okay,” John says.

“Oh. Yes. Okay.”

John laughs again. “Wish we’d done that the first time I came here in the middle of the night.”

“So do I. But, my spine. Wouldn’t have felt it.”

He dozes for a split second. When he opens his eyes again, he sees John in tears, staring at the ceiling with a kind of awe. That wakes him up. He says John’s name, and John smiles at him, extending a hand. Ben takes it.

“It’s okay,” John says.

“I didn’t mean to remind you of the chair.” 

John shakes his head. “There was no avoiding it. But, it’s okay. I’m just happy. I haven’t been so happy since I got my legs back. But this, this was what I couldn’t have then, and the thing I thought I knew. I was afraid I’d forgotten too much, after so long without it. I thought I wouldn’t be able to show you everything I have for you, but what you showed me...I didn’t forget how good it is, because I didn’t _know_. Because it was never you before, it was never _us_. Just looking at your body and knowing I could have you, feel you, make you feel so good...it was another part of that miracle. It all was. And this time, there’s no price. There’s just you and me, and we can do anything. Nobody’s gonna stop us. We’re never gonna run out of time. Can you believe it?”

Ben swallows and shakes his head, his voice lost to emotion again. John smiles wide.

“And you make the best noises,” he says. “Holy _shit_.” 

Ben laughs with him, and they squeeze each other’s hands tightly. Ben could fall asleep like this, and does for a moment. John wakes him gently, rubbing at his wrist and forearm.

“I have to get out and walk a little bit,” he says.

“You can move?”

“I have to. I’m exhausted, but I know I’m not gonna be able to fall asleep. Probably walk a few miles and pass out.” He laughs. “I’m all over the place right now, I’m sorry. I hope this doesn't happen every time.”

Ben chuckles, at a loss to convey how lovely and odd and wonderful this man is to him in this moment. He can only say John’s name softly and hold his hand. “Come back to me when you wake up,” he says.

His smile is soft, his eyes more so. “I’ll be back. I won’t be long.” He sits up. “Come on, I’ll help you to bed.”

Ben groans at the thought of moving that far. “I’m fine here.”

“You wanna sleep on your kitchen floor?”

“Don’t wanna move. Floor can’t hurt anyway.”

“I guess not. Can I get you something, at least?”

“Love some water.”

For a second, there’s nothing, then he feels John’s hand under his head, tilting it up toward the glass. He opens his mouth and drinks, in long, satisfying gulps. John lays his head back down gently and carefully, as if he could still be hurt. At this rate, Ben’s heart will take up his whole chest soon. 

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” John says, and kisses his cheek. 

Ben hums some sort of affirmative and starts to drop off again, his fuzzy mind still aware of John’s movements as John dresses and gets up. He feels something soft and warm being draped over him, probably the blanket from the sofa, and realizes only then that his drying sweat has left him a little chilly. John’s hand moves up and down Ben’s back once or twice. The light goes out, and the door opens and closes. Back in a few hours, Ben thinks. He has a vague, anxious dream about their earlier conversation, where he’s the one requesting a period of denial, and John won’t answer him. It’s mercifully short, and the other dreams are much better. He wakes up more than ready for John again, and considers running out into the jungle to find him that way, sans blanket. It would be some wake-up call. It keeps him smiling as he mops and washes the rug and bathes. John will be back. He can’t wait.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As their bond deepens, Ben and John revisit Island locations from their shared history and explore how things could have been different. Contains one instance of very light bondage and multiple scenes of explicit sex. Warning for common sexual squick: the first scene contains rimming followed by kissing.
> 
> We are now beyond the realm of previous LiveJournal posts! Songs for this chapter are "Enter From The East" by Jewel and "Watermark" by Enya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not using the canon afterlife scenes or concepts at all. This conclusion to my Summerland Trilogy will have a happy ending that's 100% real. The other characters listed appear only in conversation or flashbacks.

True to his word, John doesn’t keep Ben waiting long. After he finishes tidying up, Ben walks out onto the porch. He’s not there five minutes before John crosses the tree line, moving quickly past the house across from Ben’s. He smiles when he sees Ben and moves much faster, soon breaking into a run. Ben smiles back, so touched he can barely breathe. He thinks of Alex doing that when she was little, overjoyed by nothing more than his presence after a few hours apart. It’s all he can compare it to, but she’s soon far from his mind. 

John collides with him, clutches him, almost lifts him off the ground in a tight embrace and deep kiss. They make their way into the house, managing to run into both the doorway and the door itself. Ben shoves the door closed behind them and presses John into it, moaning into his mouth when John grinds against him. For a moment, Ben is determined to lead him into the bedroom, to have someone in his own bed for the first time ever. They get a few feet into the living room. John keeps grinding, pulling Ben down on top of him. They’re tangled together, unable to pull back enough to strip each other for more than a moment under the magnetic pull of their bodies. Ben forgets all about the bedroom. As John’s cock slides against his own, slick with their fluids, Ben would be hard pressed to remember where the bedroom is. 

John clutches his hips and ass, pulls forward and pushes back until they’re moving together in a slow roll that takes Ben’s breath away. John’s face is beatific, eyes closed and head thrown back. Ben slides a hand over his bare chest, his thumb grazing John’s nipple. John catches his hand, presses into it, groans as he prompts Ben to squeeze. Ben does, and forgets himself in the pleasure of watching John writhe and gasp. He feels the sweetest stab of envy at how well John knows his own body, how freely he asks for what he wants, but there’s so much more time for them both to learn. He teases one nipple while sucking hard at the other, relishing John’s gasps, John’s hands in his hair. John lays one hand on Ben’s face and pulls it toward him for a hard kiss. He gives Ben’s cock a forceful squeeze with the other. Ben groans against his neck.

“Give it to me,” John breathes. 

“Yes,” Ben answers automatically, his face on fire, his lips tingling on the stubbled flesh of John’s jawline.

His eyes burn into Ben’s. “I want it so bad. You know how much.” 

He knows it so well that for a moment, it goes far beyond the memory of last night. It’s as if he’s a part of John’s body, a thought in John’s head. He can see the same revelation in John’s eyes. They’ve never been so close to anyone else. He’s already inside John, in so many ways, as John is inside him. He touches John’s face and kisses it, takes in the small smile that says John can’t quite believe it, either. For a little while, there’s nothing else, but their bodies soon grow impatient again. John is moving against him now, whispering in his ear.

“When we were drinking that night, I thought about being on this floor with you. I thought about you just grabbing me and fucking me right here. Doing whatever you wanted with me. Whatever we wanted.”

Ben struggles to catch his breath, rasps out John’s name. He remembers asking many of the hired hands not to speak to him during the acts, embarrassed and occasionally humiliated by that particular form of false exuberance, by the useless old fantasies it made him remember. Without a worthy context or a real reason for them to want him, they sounded absurd, but this is John. This is real. He says something else Ben doesn’t quite catch through his closing ears, through the rush of need that burns him to a cinder, then turns over for Ben. A tiny scrap of a thought occurs to him, of wanting John back the way he was, of being able to see every flicker across his face as Ben slides into him, but the sight of John’s bare back obliterates it for now. Broad and hard, already wet from his walk through the jungle. Ben lays his hand on it, mesmerized by every flexing muscle, every quick swell of breath. He strokes the smooth skin up to the shoulders, down to the firm little curves of John’s ass. He squeezes one cheek in each hand. John moans and spreads his knees wider apart until he’s fully exposed at the center, all dark pink and gleaming with sweat. Touching this part of him with nothing but hands suddenly doesn’t feel like enough. 

He remembers seeing it done with a tongue in the first pornography he ever sought out – an old magazine from what passed for dad’s stash of such things – and wondering if he’d ever understand people well enough to lead any of them. He understands now. Now, his mouth is watering. There’s no part of John he doesn’t want to touch, to please, in every way he can. It’s all beautiful to him. He bends down to give John his tongue. John squirms and pushes back against him, his body taut and shaky, telling Ben all he needs to know without making a sound. Ben presses his face further into John’s cheeks, licks him hard, teases that tiny ring of wrinkled softness as inventively as he can. The taste of his skin is stronger here, muskier. When John finally breaks his silence, it’s a hoarse, breathy moan, an unhinged sound that makes Ben’s cock throb dangerously. He pulls away briefly to wet his fingers, then works one in, teasing stretched flesh with his tongue as he does it. John pushes back hard.

“More,” he begs. 

Ben gives him more, moving his fingers in and out, but has only seconds to enjoy John’s noises before John is reaching back for him, grabbing at his hip and thigh and cock, incoherent with need. Ben spits in his hand and slicks up his cock with it, intensely aware that more than one first is about to happen. Even after the worst diseases were eradicated, he never dared to go without a condom. He knows that if he thinks about it, he won’t have a prayer of making it last, of giving as much as he got last night. Sinking into John obliterates every thought in Ben’s head.

He falls forward onto John’s back, all his strength lost to heat and tightness and unbearable softness, all of it amplified far beyond anything in his experience. Whatever sound John is making reverberates through his body. Ben opens his mouth wide on that flesh, tasting it, sucking at it, sinking his teeth into it. John clutches him hard, and Ben can’t help but thrust forward into that grip. John’s voice crashes through his momentary deafness, a cry of absolute abandon that seems to go on forever. John wasn’t prepared for this, either. It’s not a question of angles for him, Ben surmises, just immediate, overwhelming sensation. Ben pulls himself up to take in the sight of John’s gaping mouth and reddened flesh, of the Island’s mark in sharp relief. Of this body so thoroughly lived in and weathered by a thousand trials, all laid out and open for him now, so beautiful and strong. He’s not going to last even half as long as he did last night. As he begins to move, with John pushing back toward every stroke and matching every sound of ecstasy, he knows it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to store up pleasure to last them through long years of privation anymore. They’ll never go hungry again. Ben lets himself feast, knowing there will always be more and more. 

John lays his arm over his lower back, palm up, long fingers stretched out toward Ben. The memory of taking this hand in deceptive comfort comes to him, unbidden and unwelcome. It won’t let him have this without complications, without the fear of doing something wrong again. His old self moves behind them, cord in hand, poised and ready to strike. John looks back at Ben with perfect trust, drunk with pleasure, his eyes ridiculously green. It sends Ben hurtling helplessly toward the edge. He takes John’s hand and squeezes it tight, his pace going frantic. He can’t get deep enough, can’t move fast enough, can’t taste and smell and touch enough of John. He can’t crawl inside this body he hurt and see himself through its eyes. He can only give. He grabs John’s cock and brings him off hard and quick. The last thing he hears is his name, through a string of gorgeous babble. John’s body clamps down on him, pulls greedily at him, clearly meaning to drain him dry. He feels himself shouting, moaning, then nothing but bliss. 

Ben loses his balance and falls back toward the chair. John collapses against the sofa and onto his back on the floor, his face utterly serene, still gasping and twitching. Ben watches him, trying to breathe, trying not to melt into the floor. In a moment, John is reaching for him again, eyes imploring.

“What are you doing way over there?” he breathes.

Ben smiles and goes to him, amazed at how fast he can move for someone with no bones. He slides on top of John and kisses him slowly, deeply, rapturously. John wraps his arms around Ben, then his legs. It was almost this hot the last time they walked together under the relentless sun outside. Almost. Heat like this was a warning once, when his body was mortal and fragile. It nurtures him now. He breathes it in with John’s breath, soaks it up through mingled sweat, through the blazing caress of John’s tongue on his own. It’s so thick around them that Ben doesn’t realize the kiss has broken until he finds John looking into his eyes. He strokes Ben’s cheek and smiles, eyes full of deep satisfaction, then lets out a little chuckle of disbelief.

“You’re something else,” he says. 

The surge of pride Ben feels is too big to contain. It comes out as a huff of air, a sound too choked to be a laugh. “So are you,” he says, for want of something more adequate. 

John smiles wide and watches him for a moment. “Wanna get out of here for a while? Come out with me?”

“Yes.” 

He laughs out loud. “I wanna christen every inch of this island. Even the really rocky parts.”

Ben joins him. “Excellent plan.” 

“Let’s go to the Swan first. Where we first met.”

John doesn’t have the last word out completely before Ben is kissing him hard, forcing away the memory of the monster saying those words to him, the day it sat next to Ben in front of the Swan’s ruined door and recited Jacob’s sins against him. He lingers at John’s neck, kissing until he can be sure it’s not showing in his eyes.

“Glad you agree,” John says.

“The Swan is...intact here?”

“Yeah, it came back, I guess. I used to go there and think about you. About the times we were alone in there, for hours. What could have happened.”

Ben works his way up to John’s jaw, taking the time to taste. “Oh?”

“You and me in the armory...you taking care of me after the blast door...the rest of them taking a lot longer to find that damn parachute...”

Ben kisses him then, slowly, gently, until they’re breathless.

“Something else,” John says again, half-whispering, his voice growing heavy with approaching sleep.

Ben grins, feeling the weight of it himself. “Not so wired this time?”

“Nope. Only made it about twenty feet out of here after that.”

One more kiss and they fall into a lazy new configuration, with Ben on his side but still draped over John. Ben closes his eyes and dreams of subterranean coolness and a fiendish pain in his shoulder. Of the light that came on inside him the first time their bodies collided, and never went out.

 

In peacetime, walking trips around the Island were much more leisurely than anything in Ben’s previous experience, but not like this. It takes them the better part of a week to reach the Swan, with so many stops along the way. John’s eyes burn even brighter under the sun. Ben carves that vision into his brain, along with so many others. He’s still saving every good thing for later, still not quite understanding this strange new world of plenty. Sometimes these moments come too fast and too frequently to memorize. Sometimes he gives up and lives only from second to second, a creature that knows nothing but heat and hunger. John knows, and revels in his ability to turn off all Ben’s higher thought processes. John knows, and joins him every time.

The Swan looks the same as it did the last time Ben saw it, a monument to Dharma’s folly in time capsule form. Just being here triggers a new charge between them, half memory, half anticipation. Ben licks his lips, wondering when and where John will touch him first. 

“Look up there,” John says, pointing toward the ceiling in the main room.

Ben looks up into the curved groove where the blast door should be visible in its retracted position. There’s only smooth metal, no prongs or ridges, nothing to indicate another structure ever existed. 

“The timer, the alarm, all that’s gone,” John says. “The lock on the armory, too. I was scared to come in here at first. Thought I’d get myself stuck forever, but it’s like this all over.” He chuckles. “The whole Island’s idiot-proofed, lucky for me.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

John smiles at him, hunger in his eyes. “I’ve wanted to bring you down here for so long. Wanted to play with you here.”

He thinks he gets John’s meaning, not completely but enough to send a hot pulse of blood to his cock. “What kind of playing?”

“Like I just met you, all over again, and I still don’t know your name. Like I’ll do anything to find out.”

Ben trembles inside. “Anything?” he breathes.

“Anything.”

 

Ben sits on the cot in the armory, trying to get into character. John has tied his hands to his feet, the way Ben was tied late in his stay here. He’s also cut Ben’s undershirt away from his shoulder and taped a bandage over the scar the arrow left, with red ink from a felt pen playing the part of blood. Every little bit helps, but the imperious coldness that once came so easily eludes Ben now. He knows he’ll be smiling when John walks through that door. 

It’s taking long enough. He wonders how John will play this, now that they know each other so much better than before, but finds himself rejecting scenario after scenario. It’s too delicious to sit here anticipating, not knowing a thing. John finally comes in on crutches. So, this is where they are, _when_ they are. After the lockdown, but before the first separation. Ben remembers everything. He still has to smile, but so does John, excitedly, conspiratorially. He’d probably help Ben with his lines if need be. Ben knows he can’t keep this kind of adoration out of his eyes. He remembers looking down at this point, so he does it.

“What’s your name?” John says. “Your real name.”

“Why don’t you just keep calling me Henry? You’ve gotten used to it.”

“Did you get caught on purpose? You and your people have been here God knows how long-”

He looks up at John, trying for unnerving but definitely not hitting the mark. “God doesn’t know. He can’t see this island any more than the rest of the world can.”

John raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching, his eyes twinkling. “What the hell does that _mean_?”

Ben takes a breath and tries desperately not to smile. He doesn’t remember what it meant. He probably never knew. It sounded mysterious enough, so he said it. John flashes him an impish grin. Ben would be across the room and on him in a second if not for these damned ropes. He can’t help straining at them a little. John sees it and has to rub the smile from his mouth. This is already becoming as strenuous as the early interrogations here, in a whole new way. John sits next to him, keeping his fake injury impressively stiff. 

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” John says.

“Do what?”

“Play word games with me. Say things that have no meaning, so I’ll be confused. So I’ll keep chasing you.” 

Ben wants to smile but can’t quite manage it, now genuinely unnerved. John holds his gaze, unable to hide his desire, but so sober otherwise. Ben could easily surrender right now, but he has to know what will happen if he doesn’t. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ben says.

“I think you do. I think you know a hell of a lot more than you’re saying. And a hell of a lot less than you like to pretend.”

Ben smirks. “Now who’s playing word games?”

“I’m not like them. The rest of the people here. I love this place, I want to stay. You can tell me who you are. You can tell me a lot of things. Doesn’t matter how crazy any of it sounds, I can take it.”

“I’ve already told my story. No one believed it, not even you.”

“That’s because that story’s not true.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s not who you are. You didn’t come here in a balloon, you were already here. You’re a part of this place, just like I am. I can see it in you.”

He’s speechless for a moment, deeply uneasy. Part of him is drifting back bodily now, pouring from one place in time to another with a sensation like sand slipping from his hands. “What brought this on? You’ve never spoken to me this way before.”

“Maybe I’ve had it with the bullshit. All of it, yours, theirs, my own. Maybe we could talk like people. I think we’d have a lot to talk about.”

“Such as?”

“Tell me your name first.”

“Why is it so important to you?”

“Because I want to know who I’ve been dreaming about.”

Ben lets out a breath in tiny, broken sighs, thinking of what it would have meant to him to hear something like that back then, as the man he was. To be someone’s dream, not their nightmare, not their bad, intrusive memory. To know his own heart enough to be able to accept all this and reciprocate. He tries to sound as sarcastic as he used to in the face of sincerity, but it comes out mesmerized. 

“That’s a great line, John.”

“I mean it,” John says, staring at him straight on, his voice level and deliberate. “You can’t talk me out of it. You can try, I guess. Tell me there isn’t something here. Tell me I don’t make you feel anything out of the ordinary.” He lays his hand on Ben’s knee. “Tell me there’s nothing you want to say to me.”

Ben wonders why John’s hand is vibrating, then realizes that’s not where the shaking is coming from. Being pursued this way, at this point in time, fills him with sublime terror. This particular Ben isn’t ready. He doesn’t understand any of this. His heart races like it never has for fear or rage or paltry orgasms in posh hotel rooms. 

“Do you want me to stop?” John asks.

His hand is inching up Ben’s thigh, so slowly that Ben might not notice it if he wasn’t looking. It’s absurd to him, and wonderful, and he finds the sardonic tone that eluded him before. “You can hardly expect to sweep me off my feet when you’ve already tied them together.”

John gives Ben’s smirk right back to him. He never breaks eye contact as he reaches over to loosen the rope between Ben’s hands and feet, letting Ben’s legs slip down to the floor. He’s still tied, but John has much better access to his midsection now. 

“You didn’t answer me,” he says. “Do you want me to stop?”

Ben can’t make a sound, mouths the word instead. “No.”

John slips down to his knees on the floor in front of Ben. Ben barely notices that John’s leg has apparently healed in record time, even by Island standards. He’s enthralled by the intensity of John’s gaze, bound to it as if another rope tied them together there. John slides his hands up Ben’s thighs, stopping not half an inch below Ben’s cock. It twitches and throbs as Ben struggles not to squirm.

“Tell me your name,” John breathes.

“Wh...”

“Because I wanna know. Let me know you.” 

His old defiance in captivity roils up inside him now, telling him to push John as far as he can, to confound him again and again until all his anger and frustration burst out. Until John removes himself from the scene and Ben has his solitude back, if nothing else. That’s the last thing he wants now. He’ll push for a different sort of passion.

“I can’t tell you,” Ben says.

“Why not?”

“We...my people...”

“They’d punish you?”

“They’d know you broke me. I’d lose everything.”

“Then, maybe they’re not really your people. Maybe you’re theirs, if you’re at their mercy.”

 _Mercy_ , he says, as he lays his hot, gentle hand over the hard bulge in Ben’s pants. Ben squirms desperately toward his touch, having never resented a piece of fabric as much as he does right now. “Maybe,” he manages to say.

“And that’s okay with you?”

“I...there’s nowhere else. Nobody else.”

“There’s me.”

“What do you want from me?”

He opens Ben’s pants and takes his cock in hand. “I want everything,” he says, then moves forward to fill his mouth.

Ben’s been here before, at the mercy of this strong, relentless mouth, but that was in the new world they’ve made together. In the armory, in 2004, it shocks him to the bone. He reels under it, with nothing but air around his flexing, shaking fingers. The rope around his wrists creaks at the force of his pulling. He lets out a broken, desperate moan. John releases him for a second. 

“Shhh,” he says. “They’ll hear you.”

Ben’s heart beats even faster, and just for a moment, he can hear the rest of them outside the door, talking, playing music, doing chores. His body goes hotter with reflexive shame at his outburst, but another part of him is glad they might have heard. He hopes they’re thoroughly scandalized, even repulsed. Even horrified enough to leave the Swan or the Island entirely. The thought of them enduring all manner of danger and tragedy only to flee from the sound of an unorthodox interrogation makes him laugh inside. Let them disappear. He and John will have what’s theirs. They’ll have their heaven forty years early, on earth. _Forty years_. He rushes to seal that figure behind a blast door in his head before it can bring back ugly memories. John’s hot, wet mouth helps immeasurably. Ben concentrates on being quiet, on writhing carefully enough that they won’t hear so much as his shoe tapping or scraping the floor. He still can’t hold back his disappointed groan when John stops again, but the catch in John’s breath and the way he licks his lips tell Ben that he’s not he only one being teased here.

“John–”

“Tell me why you’re really here.” 

“For you. I came for you.”

“Why? Am I important?”

“Very. You’re our leader. Supposed to be.”

John gives his cock half a stroke, a small morsel that only adds to his hunger. He thrusts up into it anyway. John grins at him, enjoying the tease, but so warm, too. “And who are you to me? As far as they know?”

“Supposed to help you. Serve you. Whatever you want.”

“What about what you want? Can you tell me what that is?”

He strains against John’s hand but can’t get any friction. When he gets his own hands back, he’ll repay John for every second of this wonderful torment. 

“I want you,” he says quickly, with an exquisite rush of fear. There’s no going back from this confession. He’ll follow John away from his people. He’ll follow him anywhere. To the ends of the earth.

John swallows hard, softness creeping into those fierce eyes now. “You can have me. What else do you want? Right this minute.”

“I want to...”

“What do you want, Henry?”

“I want...I want to come. Please...make me.”

John’s eyes don’t close as he takes Ben’s cock in again. Ben almost wants to look away, his whole body breaking out in fresh sweat, but he can’t escape John’s singular focus. He sucks harder now, his eyes full of heat and light, his cheeks hollowing over impossibly hard flesh. The sight hits Ben like a fist, painless but enough to make him wobble. It leaves him entirely certain of one thing.

“I can’t be quiet anymore,” he says, his voice strained. “I’m sorry, I-”

“Let them hear you. How loud you can be, how much you love it.”

“They’ll...we can’t...”

“Fuck ‘em,” he says, a delicious growl in his voice. “Let ‘em hear what I can do.”

John takes him deeper than ever now, works that callused hand around him in a devastating rhythm. He can’t make a sound until John’s tongue does some incomprehensible backflip that Ben must remember to ask about later. He lets them hear him then, throwing his head back and letting out a moan that builds into a wail, out of liberation as much as ecstasy. John draws it all out of him in a wave that feels bigger than anything in the ocean outside and above them. John swallows it whole. Ben can’t feel the ropes anymore.

John kisses and touches Ben’s face until he can hear and open his eyes again. It’s time to end the interrogation. “What’s your name?” he asks once more.

For a moment, Ben can’t quite remember. It doesn’t seem to matter much, and he finds that oddly pleasurable. He’s here because he’s meant to be. There’s no mission, no jealousy, nothing dark or dangerous in his life at all. Only this. John’s eyes, as adoring as they are dark and overstimulated, tell him who he is. They tell him he’s so much more than he once was. He believes them, now if not always. 

“Ben,” he answers. “I’m almost certain it’s Ben.”

John smiles. “Nice to meet you, Ben.”

Ben answers with a kiss, and John unties him. He hasn’t even unzipped his pants yet, Ben notes with awe. Now he’s frantic to reciprocate. He switches places with John quickly and runs his hand over the solid bulge of John’s cock, over the growing wet spot of anticipatory fluid. John makes a sound so desperate and fractured that Ben can’t bring himself to tease at all. He’s quick with his hand and mouth, but he still has a little time to savor. Every throb resonates through his tongue, deep down into his own body, so that even his spent cock pulses in time with John’s. 

Ben’s mouth always melts John from the knees up. He falls back on the cot now, propped up by one shaky elbow. Ben feels those eyes on him and thinks of John’s long fascination with his mouth. He knows just what he wants John to see as he comes. He stops sucking and stroking and pulls at John’s hip, prompting him to thrust. John gasps and begins to move in Ben’s mouth, but barely. It’s only then that Ben looks up at him. John gasps once more, then loses his breath entirely, his skin turning a violent shade of red. The vein in his forehead fills to bursting as he thrusts deeper, faster, wild eyes flashing. When a cry finally breaks from him, it’s deafening. If, by some miracle, they didn’t hear Ben before, they’ll hear John now. He claims this place as he’s claimed Ben, with the sheer force of his will, with the enormity of his desire. _Yes_ , Ben wants to say. _Yes yes yes_. He can only swallow and suck and swallow again, until John loses all cohesion and collapses. 

Ben folds himself up onto the cot with John and listens to him breathe for a while, imagining the sounds of the others outside the door, packing up and clearing out at last. John laughs a little, mystified. 

“How can it be this good every time?” he says. “It’s fucking ridiculous.” 

Ben chuckles and kisses him. “We’ll just have to learn to live with it, I suppose.” 

 

They stay in the Swan for a few days, remembering, turning missed opportunities into new pleasures. Knowing they can always come back again fills Ben with a sudden, intense love for the place, for all the old places that are here and intact for their use. They’re home to him now, like his house, like all the wild places in between. John says he wants to go to the Orchid. In life, they began in the Swan and ended in the motel, but they’re living in a truncated reality now. They said goodbye in the Orchid and died many years apart. They can pretend to know nothing else. From the moment they arrive, John is tense and quiet. Ben doesn’t understand until they’re standing in the space where they parted.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have come here,” John says.

“Why is that?”

“Because this is where it all went bad for me. Or bad to worse, more like. When you left, when I left. I feel like...like you’re really gonna leave, and I’m never gonna see you again. Like I can’t hold on to you, no matter how hard I try.”

Ben goes to him, touches his face, kisses him softly. “I’m not leaving. I’ll never leave.”

“I know. But it scares the hell out of me.”

Ben knows the feeling, lets himself feel it, too. “Sometimes I think this is all a dream. I’ll wake up like I always used to, without you.”

John gathers him up tight, a tremor running through him and straight into Ben. This place smells like rich soil and grimy metal at once. It’s suffocating. Ben finds a way for them both to breathe.

“Make me stay,” he says.

“What?”

“Make me stay this time. Do whatever you have to do to keep me from going to that wheel. Keep me with you.”

John gives him a hoarse almost-laugh. “That scares me even more. Like anything I try is gonna fail.”

“I don’t believe that. If anyone could have gotten through to me in here, it would have been you. And we can always go somewhere else. Come back later, or not at all. It’s all okay.”

John pulls back to look at him, then gives him a soft, wet kiss that melts him right into the floor. 

“I want to make you stay,” he whispers without pulling away again, his breath hot on Ben’s lips. Ben trembles hard and resists the urge to crash into him, to have him right here and now and miss whatever he means to do next.

“Do it,” Ben whispers back, and waits. John lets him go and stands back.

“The parkas are still in the locker room,” he says, his eyes gleaming.

Ben takes a deep breath and smiles before setting off. 

 

For the second time in his long existence, Ben holds out his hand to John in the belly of the Orchid. John only looks at it, then at him, as he did the first time. Uncertain, reluctant to say goodbye to the man who’s tormented and tantalized him by turns. Ben is glad for the memory of looking down when he made his apology. The words already mean too much, now that Ben knows the true extent of the pain he caused. Looking him in the eye would surely break their pact.

“I’m sorry I made your life so miserable,” he says.

John takes his hand, but squeezes much harder now than he did then, and takes longer to let go. The moment stretches out far beyond the time it took Ben to turn away and leave for the blown-out passageway to the wheel. He waits for something to happen, at a loss to predict how John will approach him, but John does nothing. He takes the same unsteady breath he did then, and Ben’s hands feel fused to the crowbar. John is still and silent until Ben finally turns away. 

“Don’t go,” John says.

“I have to,” Ben answers, sounding more resolute than he feels. 

“You don’t. Nothing good can come of it.” 

John’s hand is on his shoulder. The freeze comes over him in full, so foreign and binding now that he wants to panic his way out of it at once. A weak protest comes out instead.

“You heard him. He said we had to move the Island. He said–” 

John turns him around, faces him with pleading, shining eyes. The crowbar falls from Ben’s hands, but they don’t flinch at the racket it makes on the floor. “I know you,” John says.

“What–”

“I know you. I know you right down to your bones. I’ve slept in your bed, I’ve breathed you all night long. You think nobody understands, but I do. I can see inside you, Ben. And I know it’s not just me.”

Ben tries to swallow with no moisture in his mouth, with the meaning of this moment only hitting him with its full force now. This is their last chance to change course and choose each other, in the past they’ve agreed on. Nothing he felt during the seduction in the Swan can compare to his fear now, of doing or saying the wrong thing and making their awful, deadly separation happen again somehow. Like some terrible magic spell he could cast purely by accident. His desire to pull John back in time with him and replay this moment the right way is too immense to quantify. The freeze is the only thing holding Ben steady now. 

“I have to go,” he rasps out.

John comes closer. Close enough for Ben to feel the heat of his body, to see the fear in the way he holds himself, with one hand clenched in a tight, flexing fist. The freeze grows exponentially worse. 

“You’re worth more than this,” John says. “More than every bad thing you’ve ever done. You’ve been used. We both have, but that doesn’t mean we’re all used up. I still have so much in me, so much to give. It’s yours if you want it.”

“I don’t have anything you’d want.”

“But, you do. I want it all. Everything you are.”

“I don’t know what you think you’re seeing, John.” 

John gives him a small, sad smile. “Because it’s hard to know when nobody’s ever come to you this way. When nobody’s been close enough to get a good look. You don’t make it easy, but I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere. If you could see yourself right now, how beautiful you are–”

“Stop. I know I’m not.”

John’s hand closes on Ben’s shoulder. He shakes his head. “You are.”

“You don’t have to say that, John. You don’t have to say any of this.”

“I’m saying it. I see it and believe it, in so many ways, so I’m saying it. You can think what you want, but you’re never gonna talk me out of any of it, because it’s been me and you all along. It’s a miracle we ever met at all. Do you really think it only happened so we could fight for a while about who got to be special, then walk right out of each other’s lives?”

Ben has to whisper through the enormous lump in his throat. “No.”

John lays his hands on Ben’s face, slowly, gently, offering and not demanding. “Do you know me?” he asks softly. “Do you understand?”

Ben’s tears are spilling before he realizes they’ve fully formed. “Yes.” 

“Do you want to stay here? With me?”

It could have been this easy for them, if they’d let it, if they’d known they were being deceived. So easy, so quick. So little pain, compared to what would come after he left this station, compared to all their empty years of mourning in between. He won’t keep mourning now. He’ll take this chance and make it as real as he can.

“Yes, John,” he struggles to say before his throat closes entirely. “Yes.”

John pulls him closer, eyes glittering, then overflowing. The kiss is as soft and wet as before, but it doesn’t melt Ben this time. It’s the first crack in the frozen expanse of Ben’s body, growing wider and longer with each slow movement. 

“Stay with me,” John whispers, their mouths still so close that it’s as if the words aren’t separate from the kiss at all. “Stay forever.”

That crack in the ice turns to multiple fissures. “Forever,” Ben agrees, and the certainty of it, the joy, breaks the freeze completely. Inward and outward, it’s blown to tiny, unrecoverable bits. John finds Ben in the rubble, brings him back to life and warmth in his arms. 

For a long time, there’s only the broad expanse of John’s shoulders and back under his hands, the quick and powerful thump of his heart against Ben’s, the soft shudder of his breath. The need for more grows slowly, then all at once, with incalculable depth and breadth. He takes John’s face in his hands and feasts on his mouth. John pushes the parka off Ben’s shoulders and opens the uniform shirt, so eager but so gentle. He slips down Ben’s body, lighting up every nerve along the way, until he’s on his knees. When he looks up at Ben, his eyes glow with warmth and want. He takes one of Ben’s hands, his skin blazing hot. He doesn’t pull, but lets Ben fall into his arms freely. John kisses him, then speaks with breathless urgency.

“I’m gonna be so good to you, Ben. I’ll never hurt you. I’ll take care of you, if you’ll let me.”

The old, ordinary ache of a life lived unwillingly alone comes back to squeeze at Ben’s throat and heart. So many years with no one to care for him this way, storing up every ounce of thwarted longing in his soul, every bit of tenderness he couldn’t offer anyone but John, until it threatened to burst him at the seams. He caresses John’s cheek, his perfect scar, and the answer comes easily.

“Only if you let me, too.”

John’s breath hitches, and he pulls Ben forward until Ben is straddling him, wrapping his legs around him. He kisses Ben long and deep, runs those fevered hands over his still-clothed flesh with a maddening gentleness. Before he can demand more, John lays him down on the floor. He makes short work of Ben’s pants and his own, then spits in his hand and lets Ben watch him stroke himself, slicking up his hard cock. Ben’s vision blurs for a second. He has to wonder if it’s possible for his eyes to sweat, from what he’s seeing and from knowing what’s coming next. He reaches for John, his whole body heavy and clumsy with arousal. John comes back down to him fingers first, effortlessly and instantly finding the best spot inside him, taking in his startled moan with a hungry kiss. Ben is already primed for more, and lets John know it with his hands and his body.

He expects to be taken hard and fast, but that maddening gentleness is back, greater than ever. John didn’t bother to remove their shirts, which Ben might regret if his skin didn’t spark so deliciously at every point where their covered flesh meets. It makes him feel so clearly that this is happening in the Orchid of old, when it needed to happen most, so unexpectedly that they couldn’t even finish undressing. John’s hands sear him to the bone every time they pass over the thin undershirt that still covers his chest. He laughs inside at the supposed expertise he used to pay for, nothing like this mad genius reserved only for him, this lover who surprises him every day. He’s dizzy with it all. Every breath feels like the last gasp before climax, and every inch of him vibrates with sublime sensation. He lays his hands on John’s face and watches him, sees every twitch of muscle around his eyes, every quiver of his wide, wonderful mouth, every bead of sweat. John opens his eyes and stares into Ben’s. Ben gasps out loud, stunned by the rush of contact, of recognition. He’s seeing John for the first time once again, and seeing him fully. 

Down in this windowless, comfortless structure, they’re under the sun again. John’s eyes are brighter than ever, incandescent with passion, but what fills Ben with awe is the soul that shines through. So much kindness, so long rejected and unrewarded. Such fierce strength, wrapped up in a wild sweetness nothing could corrupt. This is all for him, just as all he is belongs to John. This is the one who holds his heart and doesn’t dream of crushing it. To his endless wonder, John is reflecting it all back to him. Ben takes in as much as he can, until his body can’t hold any more delight, until his heart sings out for the whole Island to hear. 

John stays inside him, touching his face, breathing on his skin. Ben is saying something, in a long, unbroken ramble. For a moment, he thinks he must really be singing. He knows the melody, but can’t quite find the words until he emerges from the perfect silence of ecstasy.

“–love you,” he’s saying. “I love you, John. I love you.”

He’s never been able to name what he feels for John, through forty years of mourning and longing for him, through all their time here alone together. He could name the effects of it, the adoration and the tenderness, but never the root of it all. He knew it only as something incomparable, as a rich and bottomless emotion eons away from the pale and fleeting thing he felt for Juliet. Even in his dreams of what could have been, the word was never said out loud. Some part of him always flinched from it, always bracing itself for rejection, even in his wildest, guiltiest, most self-indulgent fantasies. It was too much to hope for, even from the one who understood him best. If he’d known he was going to say it today, he would have expected to be terrified and tried to prepare himself accordingly. The fear is towering and breathtaking and lasts for all of a second. For as long as it takes Ben to open his eyes. For as long as it takes John to recover enough to process what’s being said to him and give his answer. 

“I love you, Ben. So much.”

Ben wonders for a moment how long John has been holding on to the words, knowing this has never happened for Ben before, guiding him on this journey but letting him be the first to say the name of their destination. John has never been more beautiful than he is now, radiating such pure joy that they’re both laughing. Ben has never seen him so happy, with his eyes crinkled into tiny slits and his smile taking up half his face. It’s a bittersweet thing to know that it’s because John has never been this happy, in all his time out in the world and here on the Island. Ben could say the same for himself, but it doesn’t seem to matter nearly as much. He never reached for happiness like John did. He wasn’t denied it, over and over, by the cold, stupid, relentless misfortune that stalked him all his life, like the vengeance of a small and petty god. Ben couldn’t mourn what he’d never had. He had his moments of contentment, but this is a feeling he’s only read about or caught some inkling of from a distance. He has his usual moment of trying to memorize it, to make it comprehensible, but it’s a living thing that eludes his grasping hands to flutter madly in his heart. 

As John goes hard and begins to move inside him again, faster now but no less tender, Ben lets go of reason, lets go of fear, lets every thought go quiet. All he knows is love. 

 

There are so many other places to go and things to experience together, but when they wake in the Orchid, tangled in inexplicable ways on the narrow bunk they shambled into sometime during the night, Ben knows exactly where today should lead. 

“I think it’s time we had a bed of our own,” he says to John’s knee. “Not for every day, mind you. Maybe for special occasions.”

“What are you talking about? These cots are great. Plenty of room to...” He tries to turn to Ben but can’t extricate his arm from under their bodies. “Not get much done at all,” he laughs.

“I’m sure this bed will take up half my bedroom. How does that sound?”

“Practical.”

It’s there when they arrive, vast and impossibly soft-looking, draped in light earthtones that match the room perfectly. John flops onto it immediately, his sweaty, dirty jungle self incongruous and exciting against the new linens. He reaches for Ben with as little pretense as he’s displayed outside, away from the stations they’ve revisited. There’s time enough to play with the possibilities of this location later. Right now, Ben can only take John’s hand and marvel at how it feels to do this in his own bedroom, after so long wondering. The disorientation he sometimes imagined doesn’t materialize. The specter of his old shame under this roof doesn’t rise up to make him ask John to join him in the shower instead, though he keeps that in mind for next time. Sometimes he’d amuse himself by imagining how taboo and perverse it would feel to do something so normal. As they move together, Ben finds that it’s quite the opposite. The thrill of this is in its normalcy, its rightness. He’s just a man in bed with the one he loves, safe and warm and deeply happy.

On some distant level, in pictures and flashes of feeling, he thinks of the men he knew in life and the ways they knew him. Dad, distant and brutal by turns. Charles, colder by the year, remorseless to the end. Richard, with his unknowable inner life, with the heart he let Ben see uncovered only once. The other men he commanded in his bad old days, rough and merciless and unfortunate enough to be near him during a time of great upheaval. Then Hugo, gentle and kind. Born far too late to salvage the first half of Ben’s life, but just in time to make the second better and worthier than he could have hoped for. He lived to unlearn the bad and soak up all the good around him, hoping it was enough to begin to make amends. There was much more to learn here. John has made him the man he couldn’t be out in the world. One who can bare his body and his heart at once. One who uses all his strength, all his cunning, all his wit to care for another, in every way he can. One who loves without limits and can accept, at long last, that he is loved in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Seven will be mostly from John's point of view, with a little mixing at the end. Thanks again to everyone for bearing with me so far, and welcome to any new readers!


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